“I feel so bad for my doctor. He’s in his sixties and after a full day, he has to go home and spend another three hours on the computer. It’s not right.”
In a seeming blink of an eye, medicine has gone from an art to a trade.
Much of it is now data entry and fast turnarounds.
If you’ve needed healthcare recently, you know what I’m talking about.
But don’t feel too sorry for the doctor.
Don’t cut your crabby NP too much slack.
They may not entirely realize it, but they do have choices.
Sure, lots of big companies are using market clout to buy up doctors.
Sure, plenty of NPs have deep educational debt.
But they do have a choice.
I’m just a run-of-the-mill family physician from a middling med school (though an excellent residency program).
When I left corporate medicine, I had so many offers to practice medicine outside the system, I couldn’t count them.
For various reasons, some appealed to me and some didn’t.
Tele-medicine, hospice and free clinics — those, I took up.
Working for a foundation, direct patient care or even private doctoring for cash — I turned down.
But all were available and viable choices for me.
Any of them added up to a more sustainable lifestyle, less data entry and much more money than I was earning before.
And if they were available to me, they’re available to your clinician as well.
So next time you see your unhappy doctor or NP ask them why they’re working where they’re working, especially if it’s so terrible.
Chances are you’ll get an answer about not yet being ready to change.
Change is hard. Change is frightening. You won’t do it unless you have to.
So don’t be too easy on your clinicians. Don’t cut them too much slack.
They’ve decided to stay where they are.
So if they complain, or gripe, or give you bad service—call them on it.
You may just be the ones to open their eyes,
break the spell,
and set them free.