I can count on my hands the num­ber of doctor’s appoint­ments I’ve had in the last decade that were unre­lated to my fibromyal­gia.  So, when I got back to work after lunch Wednes­day and a reminder appeared on my screen for a doctor’s appoint­ment in 30 min­utes, I was nearly giddy.  I almost felt like a nor­mal per­son.  The sort who only goes to the doc­tor when some­thing out of the ordi­nary is going on.  The sort who only has a follow-up to make sure the unusual con­di­tion has run its course or responded to antibi­otics or what­ever… NOT the sort who goes to the doc­tor to change what is ordi­nary for them to a more-comfortable, less-painful ordinary.

Before I con­tinue with my story, I should explain:

Dur­ing Octo­ber and Novem­ber I had this funky air­way spasm thing going on.  Some­times when I took a breath I’d choke on the air and be left gasp­ing.  A nurse prac­ti­tioner in my doctor’s office put me on an inhaler (that I swear did noth­ing), but as is often the case with “nor­mal” peo­ple (I pre­sume), the annoy­ance ran its course and I can now breathe deeply and con­sis­tently with­out the aid of an inhaler.

Enough bor­ing, use­less details; back to the story…

So, I went into the appoint­ment think­ing we’d dis­cuss my air­way.  And we did.  But lucky for me, my doctor’s office has this nifty new process I really appre­ci­ate.  When the nurse comes in to get your pulse, blood pres­sure, height, weight, and what­not, they hand you a piece of paper with a few sim­ple ques­tions.  I don’t remem­ber the specifics, but it was some­thing like this:

1. What is the one thing you can­not leave today’s appoint­ment with­out addressing?
2. What symp­toms are you experiencing?
3. Are there any other ques­tions you have for the doc­tor?
   1. Refer­rals
   2. Prescriptions/Refills
   3. Other

There was at least one other ques­tion, but I can­not remem­ber what it was.  Any­way, I was thrilled.  All too often I leave an appoint­ment only to real­ize, a few hours later, I for­got to ask a few ques­tions or get a refer­ral.  I scrib­bled down the answers to the first two appointment-pertinent ques­tions.  Sim­ple enough.  The final ques­tion was another story… and I’ll dis­cuss it in the next post.  But for now, I’m stick­ing the ques­tion­naire.   I am thor­oughly impressed.

I thought per­haps the paper would be used to focus the appoint­ment and pre­vent patients from pil­ing all their med­ical issues into one appoint­ment.  Maybe the kind nurse was, in fact, a secu­rity guard tasked with lim­it­ing access to my doc­tor. Maybe she was going to politely read my answers and then invited me to make an addi­tional appoint­ment for each answer to the afore­men­tioned ques­tions #3.  I really had no idea what to expect.  But I was still excited they’d prompted me to remem­ber what I would oth­er­wise for­get.  (Remem­ber, we’ll get back to ques­tions #3 in the next post.  Trust me, you’re interested.)

Luck­ily the kind nurse was not a secu­rity guard, nor was she at all inter­ested in what I wrote on my ques­tion­naire.  Fan­tas­tic!  My doc­tor, despite all the lame-o stuff going on in the med­ical indus­try, is improv­ing his already superb cus­tomer ser­vice.  He (or the pow­ers that me) has added a process to pro­mote cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and bring rou­tine and focus to his appoint­ments.  I hope/bet he is able to accom­plish more in a day.

And, If noth­ing else, I left the doctor’s office feel­ing proud of my doc­tor and grate­ful for his will­ing­ness to rec­og­nize that (despite the neces­sity of his job) he’s still in a ser­vice indus­try.  Way to go Dr. Arkins!  It’s doc­tors like you who make patients with chronic con­di­tions still feel human.

So, fibro­folks.  Are you doc­tors begin­ning to imple­ment a sim­i­lar process?  Beyond the typ­i­cal “And what are you here for today?”  I am curi­ous if this level of cus­tomer ser­vice is becom­ing the norm.

Come back in a bit for Fibromyal­gia and your Doctor’s Cus­tomer Ser­vice, Part 2 (or Try­ing Stuff: The Rhap­sody Bed by Tempur-Pedic)