I guess I don’t see sites like Posterous adding much to what’s been going on through pre-existing channels (including word of mouth and heated phone calls about your doctor to your gossipy friend – which are quite important because they are *local* channels).

That said. You are right about practising good communication including setting out the complaints – let’s say “concerns/queries” – procedure from the outset, also about responding appropriately to negative feedback. And I think patients ought to think twice before naming and shaming their doctor/clinic in the heat of the moment – just as they should think twice about heated comments in general, but especially because this practice has wider effects on the general atmosphere of doctor-patient relationships. Which is not to say they shouldn’t say anything negative about their doctor in public, but to be fair to all parties, unpleasant observations deserve reflection.

Bea

Here is something of interest to me as regards this topic:
My mother is the chief of staff of the board of medical examiners in my home state. And as she reports, nice doctors don’t get sued. Period. It’s not necessarily because they are better doctors. Some of the most respected (by their peers in terms of their skill) surgeons are the most sued. And on the surface, that seems kind of unfair. These doctors are incredibly educated, and incredibly practiced in their fields. They run circles around their peers as it comes to their ability to fix a particular diagnosis.

BUT. But if you find your doctor to be abrasive or to have horrible bedside manner, chances are you won’t be as forthcoming about your situation. You won’t feel as though you are in a safe environment, and because of that, the doctor is going to miss out on key things that could change the way you are treated. I don’t care if I’m telling you 10 irrelevant things, and you’re in a hurry and you don’t want to hear it and you are SO SMART and SO WELL RESPECTED (by your peers) that you had me diagnosed the second I walked into your office. There is a strong chance that one of those ten things I just told you will be pertinent to my treatment, even if it is just that I need to feel informed before I consent to treatment.

Arrogant doctors get sued, and in my opinion, with good reason. Peoples is peoples (to quote the Muppets), and if your doctor isn’t treating you like a ‘peoples’, then you aren’t going to get the care you deserve.

And so, yes. I want to read about that thin-skinned patient and their feelings about their treatment. Because while there are instances where people have off days, chances are that doctor will treat you the same way. And while doctors need this information directly, in my experience, arrogance isn’t a quality that lends itself to respectfully considering a patient’s feelings, and most likely only further confirms to the doctors and their staff that patients are just a bunch of whiners who can’t handle the truth (and at their core, doctors who don’t listen to patients, who treat them poorly, are ALL arrogant. Actually, knowing the doctors I know, as friends, or as care providers or as co-workers of my mother, they ALL have a streak of God-complex running through them- it’s almost necessary for this field, to want to go into a profession in order to heal people, you have to have a little of this ‘I want to hold people’s lives in my hands’ attitude. Like how you have to have at least a streak of authoritarian issues in order to want to be a cop– you need to be the one in charge, you need to be the ultimate boss, etc., thus why the line between cop and criminal is so easily blurred at times. But I digress. )

Anyhow, if you are entering into a relationship with a doctor that you intend to be a long-term relationship, you may consider calling your local medical board and finding out how many times that doctor has been sued, because it will be a good indicator of what their bedside manner is like.

(Oh, and anaesthesia is the field in which you find the highest percentage of drug abuse among doctors. Never let an anaesthesiologist with shaky hands give you any sort of treatment- it’s a strong possibility that if they seem high, they are.)

Sorry I got a little off topic there. All of that is my way of saying that yes, patients have the responsibility to be active in their care and thus respectful of their doctors. But that generally, doctors who receive these reviews, even the vitriolic ones, are doctors who probably treat most of their patients in a way that is a cause for concern. Clinics and practitioners who are respectful of patients probably won’t have much to do in order to prevent their instances of ill treatment from hitting the web, because there generally won’t have been any ill-treatement worthy of remarking upon if these doctors are respectful in the first place. You simply cannot get high quality care from a doctor who leaves you angry. If you are angry, you are defensive and you are not fully able to share all pertinent information with your doctor, and thus, you are not able to get the care you need. Good doctors should never leave you angry enough to rant on a blog, ever. And so thus, I hope people don’t cool down before posting their experiences. I want to know so that I can ensure I choose a better doctor to treat me.

Essay over!

I’ve always been confused about bloggers who made comments like, “If my RE is reading this, please don’t tell me.” Why would an RE care about a patient’s blog? I always felt like my docs barely cared enough to talk to me when I was in front of them, much less read about me in their spare time. But I guess some doctors do google themselves.

Oh, and about the phone calls: my first RE was always within a 1-hour window with calls, except for the day of my first miscarriage. The nurse called and said that the results weren’t in yet, and she’d have to call back later. For my second miscarriage at a different clinic, the tipoff was that the RE called me himself. As soon as I heard his voice, I knew it couldn’t be anything good.

I just react viscerally to the idea of my doctor or my clinic or an adoption agency putting more restrictions on me. They’ve invaded so much of my life already – now this too you take away from me?

I’ve also always been careful about my wording. I try to edit and re-read things that could be perceived in a negative light. However, I also reserve the right to portray a situation the way I felt it happened.

Until I got a phone call from my doctor indicating that nurses and patients found my blog to be negative about my doctor. He read it. He did not think what I’d written was offensive, and he encouraged me to continue blogging in the same space. I am blogging, but in a different space that isn’t “googleable”. I’m using a pseudonym.

Perhaps I should have been more careful. Perhaps I should have stopped blogging in the original space sooner. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone at the clinic would stay as interested as they apparently did. I’m a little paranoid now, and the clinic “feels” a little weird to me. Not because of my doctor – but because of the nurses and staff reading for so long without ever mentioning anything. I didn’t just write about medical procedures; I bared my soul, my struggles, and my heartaches. For me, the medical part – the part that got me in trouble – wasn’t the important part.

What’s done is done. I learned some lessons in internet “privacy”. I hope some staff learned some lessons along the way about what infertility patients are really thinking and feeling.

I do not post anything about infertility on FB. And I have occasionally on Twitter, but I will never post anything about my clinic there or in a “live-blogging” way. And my blog will have “clinic-scented” stuff – like I had a check today – but nothing written with emotions. Because you never know exactly who is reading if your blog is public.