Dr. Dev (Fictional Name) was sitting in the surgery OPD when a patient entered the room followed by 9-10 persons. Even before he came near him, Dr. Dev noticed that he was having a small ulcer, around ½ inch in size, just below the elbow crease, covered with dirty slough material.
When the patient sat on the patient’s chair, Dr. Dev took the old OPD slips from his hand and inspected them. Dr. Dev, who used to speedily cram heavy medical textbooks on the night just before the college exam, quickly noted from the patient’s old record, that as he had suspected, the patient was having the wound for around 15 days, which occurred when he received an intravenous injection at the common site near the elbow crease, which unfortunately spread outside the vein and caused the ulcer. Also, he was diabetic and the last recorded sugar in his slips was also high.
Making a diagnosis of delayed healing of the ulcer due to uncontrolled diabetes and movement of the ulcer site as it was near the elbow joint, Dr. Dev asked the junior resident sitting with him to take the patient to minor operation theatre and under local anesthesia remove the necrotic slough from the ulcer, do a good dressing, write antibiotics and pain-killers and refer him to the physician for the change of drugs to control of his diabetes. He directed the patient to go with the junior resident for further treatment. The entire sequence occurred in just 1-2 minutes.
On hearing the patient turned livid and angrily shouted at Dr. Dev, ‘You doctors don’t want to work at all. You are advising me treatment without seeing me properly and just shunting me away!’
Dr. Dev tried to placate the patient, saying, ‘I have gone through your records and read the full history and treatment given previously which was correct. Your wound is not healing because of high blood sugar, which the physician will treat, and the movements of your elbow joint, which you will have to restrict. The minor surgery I advised is very well done routinely by my resident. There is no question of negligence on my part.’
Dr. Dev's words fell on deaf ears. The patient continued his harangue, with the persons accompanying the patient joining in by making aggressive gestures and sounds of resentment.
To defuse the situation, Dr. Dev got up, put on pair of sterile gloves, slowly palpated the patient’s ulcer and the surrounding areas and moved his forearm in different directions, all the time, with a look of intense concentration on his face.
Dr. Dev did not want to do this palpation in the first place as it was painful to the patient and its finding was not going to make any difference to the treatment.
Once he felt that the patient looks satisfied, he stopped the examination and removing the gloves he wrote the treatment of the patient by his own hand in his OPD slip. This was the same treatment that he had asked his resident to write and then requested the patient to please go to the minor OT with the resident.
It is logical that the time you devote to a patient or a problem should be in proportion to its seriousness. But in actual life, you have to devote time in proportion to the size of the ego of your patient/client/customer. If you appear to be devoting less time than their ego demands then you may face resentment and retaliation, for being ‘superficial’ or ‘not serious enough’.
It is not enough to just provide the treatment or solution to most people. Most people want their doctor or service provider to listen to them, empathize with their hardship, devote time to them and provide the treatment or solution only after due deliberation.
If you skip any of these either due to lack of time, work overload or the minor nature of problem according to you, then your patient or client is not going to be satisfied, even with correct treatment or solution.
Remember, you may see someone’s problem as minor, but to most persons, their own problem appears to them as the biggest problem on earth.
It may not be true in other professions, but when a crowd accompanies a patient to the hospital than the patient and the crowd either think that the patient is a VIP or that he is suffering from a very serious life-threatening disease. So be ready to respond accordingly to avoid any unpleasantness.
(Based on an allegedly true incident)
— ND
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DISCLAIMER: This article is intended only for fun purposes. The author does not promote or recommend any behavior illustrated here or claim it to be useful. Use the information herein is at your one's own risk. Before trying to emulate or follow anything the reader is well advised to take into account ethical, moral, legal and other considerations. The author recommends that Medical Practice should be of the highest ethical and moral level keeping in mind the interest of the patient as foremost.
DISCLAIMER: This article is intended only for fun purposes. The author does not promote or recommend any behavior illustrated here or claim it to be useful. Use the information herein is at your one's own risk. Before trying to emulate or follow anything the reader is well advised to take into account ethical, moral, legal and other considerations. The author recommends that Medical Education should be of the highest ethical and moral level keeping in mind the interest of the patient as foremost and according to MCI and other Board’s norms. 
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