Medical office administrator reminds patients to be kind
Please be kind to the staff at your physician’s office. We are the ones who work behind the scenes 10 hours a day assisting your physician.
Please know that we are people too. We have families that worry about us, our emotional, physical, and mental states. We do not leave the work behind as we walk out the door of the office. We are the ones who wake up two or three times a night and can’t get back to sleep because we’re thinking about you.
Please do not raise your voice with us over the phone if we can’t give you an appointment within a couple of days. Please do not yell and swear at us when you decide to call one morning for an appointment for a problem you’ve had for over a month, but today’s the day you want something done about it and I can’t give you can appointment until next week.
Please do not yell at us if the office is running 15 or 20 minutes behind schedule because someone is having an emotional or mental crisis and the physician is taking extra time to deal with them.
The next time you visit your family physician’s office please consider the fact that your physician sees patients for six or seven hours a day and then has another two to three hours of paperwork on top of that. We do so much behind the scenes that you have no knowledge of. Physicians are burning out at an alarming rate. So are their office staff. A lot of us have many, many years of experience, and what we are experiencing these days is unprecedented. Yes, we blame so much on isolation from COVID but we seem to have lost our social skills and our knowledge of how to interact on a day-to-day basis.
Please be kind. Please know that we do care about you.
Sheila Croome, Kawartha Lakes
That “please be kind” advice needs to go both ways. Clinic staff must do their utmost to remain professional and put the health of patients first. We all realize how much stress our healthcare system is under while it undergoes transformation by Dr. Jane Philpott et al. Hopefully the artificial intelligence MP Karina Gould said during the LPC election debate is increasingly playing a role in Canada’s healthcare systems will soon take some of the pressure off primary care professionals, especially for completing administrative duties and paper work. If my experience is any measure of what others face when trying to get their healthcare needs met at local clinics, the actual healthcare our system is able to deliver is woefully inadequate. You can telephone, all day, every day, for a whole week and never get through to make an appointment. Voicemail is not allowed, so we can’t leave a message, nor can we text or email. When we try to make an appointment online for the only spots available a month in the future, the software is often broken, won’t take our health card numbers, is frozen, down for maintenance, etc. When we contact the administrators to advise them of our difficulties and to ask for help, it may be misinterpreted as a complaint about the staff when it is just a not-unreasonable effort to get our healthcare needs met. No patient should be required to provide reception with intimate details about their private health, personal hygiene and behaviours as they are not members of any college that can hold them accountable should they unethically share our private healthcare details with their friends and family. Reception staff is not qualified, either, to diagnose, which they do too frequently, over the phone, in an effort, it appears, to relieve the pressure on primary care professionals. When reception staff tell someone they “just have the flu” and it turns out to be something more serious, liability can arise. It is unfair to reception staff as they are simply not paid enough to take that kind of risk. Reception often tells us to take our non-emergency concerns to the ER which increases costs for taxpayers and puts pressure on emergency services. Alternatively, we can access the after-hours clinic but only if we are willing (and able) to stand outside in the dark in sub-zero sleet, rain, and high winds, while running a fever, in order to be eligible for time-limited services. The pressure on not only the system and healthcare professionals but also on vulnerable patients is immense. Sheila Croome’s effort to assure the public that “Please know that we do care about you,” is hard to believe when one finally manages to get past all the barriers required to get an appointment, shows up on time, sits in a crowded reception room full of sick people, watches reception call in one patient after another for their appointments and, when finally every other patient has been called in, one approaches reception and is told one’s primary care professional has refused to see one because reception didn’t see one waiting for half an hour in the waiting room and the half hour allotted for the appointment has expired. In such situations, one must firmly make one’s case just to get the care the OHIP guarantees we are entitled to as residents of Ontario, just to be seen, while sick, after the Herculean effort required just to get an appointment, and that may, in turn, be misinterpreted as “yelling” or other abuse. Those who are sicker, weaker, and less assertive may simply go home, give up, condemn themselves for being sick, and die. And no records are being kept of how often that happens to our vulnerable members of society. I appreciate the luxury of having a primary care professional for the specialists that can connect me with, but primary healthcare in Ontario is broken and neither the patients nor the staff are to blame.
Joan, it sounds like you’ve had a difficult experience with the Primary Care providers in our area. I agree, the standards and expectations vary so much office-to-office. I, also, have seen crowded waiting rooms (ours included) as we often fit patients in for same day appointments whenever possible. The secretaries and receptionists answering the phone booking appointments are not qualified to give medical advice and are advised by their physicians not to do so. Every inquiry regarding test results or medical issues is run past my physician before I respond to messages left on our voicemail. Yes, our office does have voicemail which takes messages during our open office hours. I know many offices have chosen not to enable their voicemail and I know, from experience, how frustrating that can be. Also, office staff are supposed to have been clearly informed regarding patient confidentially and have even signed a confidentially agreement, which outlines possible consequences if this is breached. I stand by my original comment stating “Please know we do care about you”. But, of course, everyone’s expectations and experiences vary and I very much acknowledge your comments.
This issue is simply the front line skirmish that occurs within a medical system that has the wheels falling off, and is failing to care for all people. Tensions at the front line are caused by access to health care being like a game of survivor.
It’s no suprise that people are in conflict on the front lines when resources are scarce and access is metered out like precious gold.
You have to fight for your own survival in the Ontario Health System. If you are elderly and cant compete, you need a family member to help advocate in this game of survivor.
2.3 million Ontarians do not have regular access to primary care.
Municipalities are now in a financial bidding war to throw money at new Doctors who come to their community.
Family Health Teams are great, RNPs provide excellent front line care, Pharmcists can now do much more than previous.
But its still simply not enough.
Compared to other countries, Canada ranks 23rd out of 32 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in doctor-to-population ratio.