DEAR DR. GOTT: My Back Surgeon Scheduled an Appointment…

DEAR DR. GOTT: My back surgeon scheduled an appointment in December 2005 for me to receive a "selective nerve block." My instructions were to appear at 10 a.m. without food, drink or medicine consumed after 6 p.m. the prior evening. I followed the instructions. All forms were filled out and the waiting period began. As a point of information, I use a walker.

After the first hour, I asked the receptionist why the delay. She said I would be called very soon. An hour later, I asked her to check her list. She did and told me I was up next. Thirty minutes passed. Three more people who arrived after me were called. I was called at 12:30 p.m., after having been there 21/2 hours.

A young, untrained nurse took me to an area closed off from all traffic and proceeded to make me ready to start an IV. After 45 minutes and three attempts to get the needle in my vein, she gave up and went for help. She never came back. Fifteen minutes later a nurse came in, started the IV and wrote the number 18 on my wrist bracelet. She led me out to a row of three seats, where two other patients were waiting. Their numbers were 16 and 17.

Numbers 16 and 17 were called in due time. An hour passed. I’d now been waiting about 31/2 hours. The nurse brought in No. 19. We chatted a little, and I told her how long I had been waiting. The door opened for the next patient. As I strained to rise, she jumped up, and they took her in without a word to me.

I really don’t know how to measure how angry I was sitting there with no water, no food, and no pain medicine since the evening before. My throat was parched dry and the pain in my back increased. I finally caught a nurse as she whizzed past and asked her where I could go to file a formal complaint. I did file my complaint before leaving, and I later confirmed it in writing.

The doctor and others couldn’t care less about my problem. They gave me the shot and dismissed me without apology or concern. I expected someone to show up during the 30-minute recovery time. There must have been some reason why I was processed in such an unprofessional manner. Instead of easing the pain in my back, I have felt worse since.

I feel better now that I’ve had my say.

DEAR READER: Your experience with insensitive medical professionals is not rare. And it should be addressed. To your credit, you followed an appropriate complaint path. However, to be candid, I doubt that anyone will pay much attention to your complaint, which is predominately based on inconvenience, not life- or-death issues.

In the past, I have urged patients to bill their doctors if the patients are kept waiting in the office for longer than 45 minutes without an explanation of the delay. Your experience is far more serious. I urge you to follow up on your complaint and, if nothing transpires, consider filing another complaint with your county’s medical society. With luck, an aggressive approach may enable you to reduce your back pain – at the same time that you are causing pain lower in the back of this medical group!

Medical doctors are operating in a new atmosphere that is anathema to us older practitioners. Although we were trained to provide service to our communities and to needy patients, today’s practitioners appear to be more concerned with how to milk Medicare and develop more income, patients be damned. This is one reason that I retired from office practice last year. I refuse to be contaminated by a philosophy to which I object.

I encourage you to follow up. Why? To help other vulnerable patients. We need to spread the healing process as widely as possible. Who knows, maybe physicians will, in the future, alter their goals, provide services at reasonable costs and become more considerate. Yeah, and maybe our government will change from a monarchy to a democracy.

(Dr. Gott is a practicing physician and the author of the new book "Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet." Quill Driver Books, www.quilldriver-books.com; 800-605-7176. Readers can write to Dr. Gott in care of United Media, 200 Madison Ave., Fourth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016.)

(c) 2007 Bismarck Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.