Doctor, the Patient Will See You Now

By Julie Titone

Have you ever gone to an appointment with a new doctor, hoping to meet Patch Adams, the true story of a compassionate and funny doctor played by the late Robin Williams in a 1998 movie?

Instead of Dr. Adams, you find Dr. Doom waiting in the exam room. 

My experience hasn’t been that extreme, but there are certainly physicians I wouldn’t recommend. Or revisit.

I say this in the wake of my annual checkup with a primary care doc who cheerfully answered my inevitable list of questions. She remembered that my mom is 102, and suggested I may have another 30 years ahead (oy). 

After four years, she knows me. When I asked if she would continue being my doctor as I age, she said, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

Good to know! Because finding and adjusting to a new healthcare provider can be fraught.

In fact, among those of us with adhesive arachnoiditis, there are few hotter topics than where to find someone willing to treat our chronic, uncommon and often debilitating form of spinal nerve damage. One man told me that a new doctor literally backed out of the exam room upon seeing the arachnoiditis diagnosis on his chart.

I’ve come to think of office visits as stage plays. The opening act —  that first appointment – features two characters who are wary of each other. 

Let’s say the patient has been disappointed by previous doctors and is worried about the cost of treatment. Her emotions are rubbed raw by unrelieved pain. On top of all that, she has little trust in what my pain specialist calls, with an ironic eye roll, “our health care system.” (One study determined that, from 2020 to 2024, public trust in doctors and hospitals plummeted from 71 to 40 percent.)

The doctor, meanwhile, has dealt with all manner of personalities and diagnoses that day, and has no idea what awaits behind the exam room door. He hasn’t had sufficient time to even read the patient’s lengthy chart because he was busy dealing with insurance companies, on top of a packed schedule.

There may be too much ego or too few communication skills present in an exam room. A doctor’s deep experience – in general, a good thing – can get in the way of seeing a patient as an individual who might differ significantly from previous patients with similar symptoms. 

I once saw a doctor who clearly was brilliant. She bombarded me with questions, but then didn’t give me time to properly answer them.

I do see improvement in doctors’ acceptance of patients who have done their own health research. We’ve come a long way since about 20 years ago, when I asked an informed question of a doctor who responded, “Oh, you’re one of those internet people.” 

In the case of rare diseases, patients are quite likely to know more about their condition than the physician does. That should be a chance for mutual problem solving, not wisecracks about Dr. Google.

Sure, there are genuine cases of “cyberchondria.” Some people are bound to misdiagnose themselves and catastrophize. But that seems like a lesser problem than having people show up at clinics totally uneducated on matters of health.

If I were a physician, I might relish the challenging cases. But I’m not sure I would have the emotional stamina that the job requires, especially if it involved seeing people in pain, day in and day out. Simply dealing with an endless parade of suffering humans could be taxing.

Let’s hope there are always doctors who get enough satisfaction out of helping people, so that they’re willing to put up with the downsides and stick with the profession. We need them.

Julie Titone is a journalist who frequently writes about health issues. Find her work at julietitone.substack.com/.