118 Becoming a Patient
short-term( e. g., in a waiting room). As Jacob said,‘‘ A person waiting is a person suffering.’’ Even when they understood the reasons for delays in waiting rooms, these ill physicians grew angry. Jacob came to realize as never before the importance of minutes, hours, and days, and specifically the painful uncertainty of anticipating a lab result:‘‘ The difference between being a doctor and not being a doctor was the timing.’’
Conflicting notions of time implicit in their physicians’ delays in returning phone calls or answering questions shocked and annoyed these ill doctors. These delays reflected the privileged status of physicians’ schedules over those of their patients. These tensions impelled doctorpatients to become even more aggressive in their own care. One ill physician said,‘‘ I get and interpret my own lab results— otherwise I’ d have to wait three months until my next appointment.’’ Ronald, the suburban Connecticut radiologist, reported:
My doctors never called me back, so I started using the physician assistants, and only using the doctor once in a while. The week before my doctor’ s appointment, I have my blood drawn. So when I go to see him, the results are right there. Otherwise, I’ d never get a call back.
Insurance coverage limited Ronald’ s ability to self-doctor. In contrast, lay patients could not self-doctor to compensate for doctors’ shortages of time.
Surprisingly, even on a smaller scale, these physician-patients repeatedly expressed frustration at not receiving appointments and lab tests immediately. Several physicians reported being astonished at their distress caused by these delays. Harry, the internist who had an MI, described his annoyance at this situation:
I discovered an intense irritation that I had to go and sit in my doctor’ s office. I had an appointment at 11:30 A. M. and wasn’ t seen until 12:50, and was driven up the wall! I’ m not different from anybody else. But why should anyone have to wait around? It is SOP [ standard operating procedure ]. Some doctors are pretty good at figuring out how to have people not wait so long, or get treated better. Rationally, I understood: they want to stack the airplanes up, so that whenever there’ s an opening, one can land. But it’ s very irritating.
Though Harry had practiced medicine for over thirty years, he only now thought seriously about why anyone should have to wait.