Doctors' Offices

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One of the most uninviting places to visit has to be a Doctor's office. First, we normally go there because we have a pain or suffer from some ailment which doesn't put us in the best of moods to begin with, but to add insult to injury, you have to contend with the peculiarities of the doctor's office staff, a very cold group of workers who are more concerned with processing you like an order as opposed to treating you like a human-being. On your first visit to a doctor's office, you are bombarded with a substantial amount of paperwork in triplicate, which I guess we have to thank our lawyer friends for. I visited a new doctor recently and was overwhelmed by the paperwork. There were more waivers of rights than there was anything pertaining to my medical history. I felt like I was more in an attorney's office than a doctor's.

The decor of doctors' offices are basically the same which is pretty plain, with outdated or irrelevant magazines to read, and a whiff of isopropyl alcohol in the air. I find patients in the waiting room tend to keep to themselves and do not like to engage in conversation, maybe because they're embarrassed by their ailment or maybe because they only speak a foreign language. When you try to strike up a conversation with someone, they look at you like they are being interrogated by the FBI or border patrol. On the walls of the office are the doctor's degrees and certificates which are intended to impress you. Some doctors tend to overdue it though as they frame everything from their college degree to their safety patrol or bar mitzvah certificates.

I guess what irritates me the most though is making an appointment with a doctor which he or she rarely keeps. If I've got an appointment, medical or otherwise, I tend to arrive a few minutes early as I do not like to be late. But doctors' really do not care about your time, even when you take time off from work to visit them. I've got a real problem with this as I wouldn't treat my customers this way. If the doctor is late, my impatience slowly brews until I can't take it anymore and storm out of the office (I've done this on more than one occasion), and frankly, I wish more people would do this. The office staff then tries to threaten you that they will still bill you for the appointment, which is actually a veiled threat. I just point out the time to them, and threaten to bill them for my lost time. I just can't figure out why after practicing medicine for so long, they can't make a simple schedule and keep it. Everybody else does. To me, its a sign of disrespect.

Doctors are not alone in terms of having poorly run offices; Dentists are just as guilty. But the only thing worse than a doctor's office has to a hospital, which even the doctors describe as,"One of the unhealthiest places on Earth."

Tim Bryce

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