The Doctor as a waiter!

I just thought the other day that doctors must be seen as waiters by some patients, they walk into a hospital as they would a restaurant, with the doctor as a waiter they proceed to make their orders.......

Doctor please can I have some sleeping medications?, the type that will make me sleep throughout the night.

Could you give me all the drugs the other doctor gave me two months ago when I had the pain in my back?

Please add a few multivitamins and cough syrup for my children................the list can go on and on and on.

When i have such patients in my consulting room,I have an overwhelming urge to scream. But you can tell that i hold back the scream and politely ask 'Could you please tell me why you have come to see me'?

During youth service at the Camp clinic, I became notoriously popular for informing my fellow non medical corpers that we did not run a chemist shop but a clinic. If they wanted any drugs, they were not to say so but they were to describe whatever ailment had brought them in. Of course trying to eradicate the mentality of a doctor as a waiter is as easy as eradicating all the mosquitoes in Lagos state.

I dream of the days when buying drugs without a prescription would be a thing of the past. I dream of the days when patients will work into my room and describe their symptoms and not tell me they have 'chronic typhoid and malaria' whatever that is supposed to mean!

Then the doctor would be looked upon with the dignity due him and not as a stop gap measure to be sought after during times of ill-health.

Comments

  1. Admin UD5:21 PM

    All the best Tomi, let's all pray hard and hope that day comes sooner than later. Cheers!!

    ReplyDelete

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