Comment by jatsign

7 years ago

In the last few years, I've noticed that visiting my kids' pediatricians that the doctors spend most of the time during the visit poking at their computer. As a parent, it makes me feel that they're just filling out a form, not caring for my daughters.

7 comments

jatsign

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gbustomtv5  7 years ago

They care about your daughters but they care about their children too. If they do not fill in electronic records they will have to stay after work. Many doctors have to work at home until 1-2AM to keep up with recordkeeping.

On the other hand, healthcare administrators who demand doctors spend no more than 15 minutes per patient AND fill pages and pages with summaries of visits really do not care about your daughters even a tiny bit.

  • octorian  7 years ago

    > They care about your daughters but they care about their children too. If they do not fill in electronic records they will have to stay after work. Many doctors have to work at home until 1-2AM to keep up with recordkeeping.

    I can certainly attest to this, from my own experiences growing up (in the 90's). My father is a doctor, and I distinctly remember him spending most of his evenings in his home office doing paperwork. I asked him why he didn't do it at the office, and he said that many of his colleagues did... But as a result, they didn't get home from work until much later. (and he was already getting home just barely in time for dinner)

singingboyo  7 years ago

I suppose this is dependent on how much you trust the doctor(s) in question, but, in general, a specialist I trust 'filling out a form' is somewhat reassuring; there's nothing sufficiently bad that they're breaking routine.

When programming, something that makes you think "yup, I'll do that as soon as there's time" is much better (for planning/PM) and more routine than "hmm, not sure, I'll try", right? I think the same applies to personal medicine - routine and boring forms are better than puzzled investigations.