Waiting Patiently?

One of the great difficulties that we experience in ophthalmology practice is that of the patient who has been waiting a long time. This happened to me earlier this week when the office was a little short staffed, so there were too many patients scheduled in the same time slot. The patient and her family were very gracious in waiting, but I think that their potential ire was a little defused because of two things we did. #1) We made sure that the doctor (me) spent extra effort for the patient. Usually, this means that the doctor spends more time with the patient. Unfortunately, that sometimes worsens the problem we already have that we are running behind. However, it wasn’t just time that helped; I personally got down on the floor to adjust her wheelchair and personally fetched the patient a cup of water (actually two cups of water because the patient wanted different temperature water than that which I brought in the first cup). #2) We made sure that we explained to the patient that our staff and our appointment times didn’t match up and that we were at the mercy of the corporate office staffing policies. That way the patient’s suspicion that something was amiss wasn’t glossed over, and we gave a reasonable explanation instead of ignoring the problem. While I am really happy that our efforts worked in this instance, it is vexing to know that it won’t work every time, because if there is an emergency that backs up all the patients, spending extra time with each patient is only going to make everyone else’s wait longer. We will just have to continue to do our best.