Fighting against time

Running clinics is always a fight.. against time.
There must always be a time limit to one's listening ear. And a time limit to one's explanation of the condition, else the patient's waiting outside may kick down your door, or the clinic assistant may suddenly become less helpful (cos she'll have less time for lunch or go home later..)

Fortunately there's somehow always a mix of patients and cases in the clinics. Talkative and problematic patients are often buffered by nicer ones who just listen and don't complain. It pains me everytime i have to spend only 1 minute on a nice patient just so that i have the time to handle a problematic patient who talks for 10mins without listening to me (but whose problem may be only half as serious as the nice patient)

The family medicine posting really threw light to a clinic encounter. It's better to find out the patient's wants early in the encounter so that the session will not go down the wrong track and end up real long.
We can throw the whole chapter's explanation for the condition the patient has but ultimately he will still be persistently sitting in his seat refusing to buldge if all he came for was actually an excuse IPPT memo..

After 1 month, I think i prefer standing the whole day in the OT pulling retractors than to sit in the air con clinic with shivers down my spine everytime i click the 'refresh' button and seeing expectantly how the number of waiting patients increase.