Walk a mile in their shoes

If you stop and ask people why they do what they do and what they are working toward, most will talk of personal goals and drivers, but few have taken recent stock of how their “cog” - or

By Editor on Jan 4, 2006

If you stop and ask people why they do what they do and what they are working toward, most will talk of personal goals and drivers, but few have taken recent stock of how their cog - or their own personal, day-to-day work - fits into the bigger machine. For most of us, the daily load of our own small piece of the whole saps our ability to think beyond the confines of our immediate pressures and responsibilities. We lose sight of the big picture.

Taking a step back and putting it all in context is a luxury of time we seldom have it seems

Over the Christmas holiday, my daughter was quite ill with a nasty case of bronchitis complicated by seasonal allergies that have refused to take a holiday hiatus thanks to the unseasonably warm weather in our slice of the world and all of which our doctor feared was quickly transitioning to pneumonia. Ammonia, as this all-too-worldly six-year old calls it, is something we barely survived the one previous time she tried it and a place we'sve vowed we never want to visit again.

Definitely not what we had asked good ol's Kris Kringle for this year, but certainly a put it all in context opportunity to view the healthcare world up close from the patient and physician side of the equation.

On our first of several trips to the pediatrician's office, my daughter had a 104F fever and holding her against me, as we waited to be seen behind at least 15 other children in various states of medical duress, felt like lovingly cradling a Yule log. The office staff, surely with last minute shopping excursions and parties with friends on their minds, was doing their best to queue us all up to be seen. But they must have felt like salmon swimming upstream each time the door to the street opened and presented another worried parent and sick child to be shoe-horned into the already crowded waiting room.

As I sat rocking and trying to comfort my whimpering daughter, I tried to calculate (for lack of anything more productive to do) just when the doctors and nurses might reasonably expect to be heading for home, even if the flow of patients stopped now, considering it was 3:00 in the afternoon and we had already been waiting nearly 90 minutes to be seen. And then, just as I was about to conclude that the answer was probably too depressing to even consider, the door opened and a pharma rep entered from the street.

My first thought was good luck getting even that industry average 90-second detail today, buddy." And then, like any parent worth their salt and despite my many years in and around this industry, my attitude turned to contempt. How dare he waltz in here in his expensive suit, grinning for no apparent reason, and think he's going to take even 90 seconds of her doctor's precious time when we'sve been waiting so long to be seen?

As he sauntered up to the receptionist's window to plead his case, I thought If she even dreams about letting him back there before we get seen, I'sll skewer them both and cook them over the heat coming off my daughter's forehead!

He was probably here not that long ago, I reasoned. Worse yet, others from his company have likely already been here this week. Does he really have anything earth-shatteringly new to share? Doubtful, I mused. And even if the doctor sees him, he's so behind and harried he won'st hear a word he spouts. Surely, this guy isn'st dumb enough to think there's any point in trying to muscle his way in here today.

He waited and we waited and waited. Finally, my daughter's name was called to go back. When we emerged into the back hall yet another hour later, after a nebulizer treatment and chest x-ray with a wad of pages off the prescription pad and instructions for how to avoid the emergency room for the night, the rep was filling the sample cabinet.

I wondered if he'sd even gotten 90 seconds with the doc. Ninety seconds out of that doc's long day, what could it really have been worth even if he'sd been successful? Could the doc even have focused on his message with so many sick kids clogging the halls and waiting room? Was there something in this stack of prescriptions in my hand that we wouldn'st have been given without his visit?

I couldn'st help but feel sorry for the rep. He was, after all, just doing his job. But surely there must be a better way for patients, doctors and reps.

There are no easy answers in this complicated healthcare dance. But as we reflect on 2005 and prepare to break new ground in 2006, the greatest challenge is to occasionally step outside our microcosms of work and into the other dancers's shoes especially those of reps, doctors and patients.

What's tried and may seem true from a busy and well-intentioned distance, in the bigger scheme of things, maybe just isn'st anymore. Just where is your cog driving the rest of the machine?