A vent is palpable with passion-bursting with words banged out in hell-bent fury.įortunately, most Yelp readers know that even 4 1/2-star restaurants get their share of 1- or 2-star rantings. Was I writing to vent or help other readers with a fair review? A fair review is measured and objective even if it isn’t positive. While I rarely write online reviews, it made me think twice when tempted to vent online. After reading my own review, I wouldn’t have wanted to see me either! The verbal vit- riol someone spews online in a moment of anger can have lasting effects on their target. I needed to remember that.Īlso through this 1-star review, I understood the power words have over people and even reputations. But for that one patient, it is often their one time a year visit with me-a precious 30 minutes carved out of 365 days. For me, a 30-minute annual exam is one of many that day. But I realized that this could leave my other patients feeling short- changed. I made up for these unscheduled extra-long visits by trying to be ultra-efficient with my other patients and especially my routine OB visits. How can you neatly wrap up a child’s death in 30 minutes? I hadn’t become an OB/GYN just to brush cells off someone’s cervix.īut I ran behind without regard for my other waiting patients and that too, I realized, was unfair and something I needed to change. When another patient told me of her teenage son’s horrific and tragic death, I just couldn’t wrap it up. When a woman scheduled for a 20-minute annual began telling me of her disintegrating marriage, I handed her Kleenex and talked without looking at the clock. I made sure to provide regular eye contact when patients were talking, to make sure they felt heard.Īs for her anger about the long wait times, I realized that too often, I was running behind a lot-spending sometimes over an hour with a distressed patient, while letting my other, on-time patients wait.

I realized that some patients took this turning away as an outright lack of interest and empathy.Īfter reading her comment where she said I never looked at her, I began swiveling around to face each patient and placed the laptop on my lap. The desk was placed such that if I wanted to use it, my back was to the patient. Frankly, knowing she took more time than the typical OB patient, I avoided asking open-ended questions and tried to run through her list of questions as quickly as possible.Īt that time, we had also switched to an EHR and for efficiency and accurate documentation, I was typing and talking to patients at the same time. I was more focused during these times and shifted into a more routine checklist visit. I had spent a lot of time during her gynecologic visits and her new OB visit, but her subsequent OB visits were 10-minute slots. Once my initial anger and defensiveness calmed down, instead of discrediting her review, I objectively considered all the negative things she had said. I care about what my patients think and wanted them to like me.

We probably even try to cheer up our colleagues or ourselves by suggesting the reviewer was emotionally unstable. Many times, I suspect doctors blow off these negative reviews as being by one of those impossible-to-please patients. Maybe she didn’t like me because she was “.” (and filled in the blank with all sorts of “–ist” views). I was tempted to disregard her review as just an isolated histrionic person who hated me. There had been no missed medical diagnosis or poor outcome, she was just furious with my interactions.įor days and even months, her words rang in my mind. Apparently, she was irate and soon after, transferred out of our office and wrote her scathing online review. On her follow-up visit, I briefly reviewed her symptoms and also found nothing concerning. She had even gone to the ED for some concern, where they had found nothing wrong and discharged her. She was an anxious person and often had questions every visit. I had seen her multiple times and in fact had prescribed her Clomid, which successfully resulted in her current pregnancy. I couldn’t recall any patient interaction that went so horribly wrong or any patient who seemed to hate me so much. Reading this review, I was horrified and shocked. In paragraph after paragraph, she skewered everything about me and my office with vehement gusto.

Kim was a horrible doctor to work with,” she wrote, “everything from the wait times to the receptionist, to the nurses, to the bedside manner of the doctors has been appalling.” The writer minced no words.

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