Impersonal Training

I recently decided to sign up for the paid services of a Personal Trainer at the fitness center I use so that I could strengthen neglected parts of my body.

I ended up with a competent man who could only be called an Impersonal Trainer. Like so many people I encounter in the health field, he had no "people skills."  He never called me by name or tried to assess my overall ability to do some of the stretches he proposed. And he seemed to be in a hurry. His first comment to me, in the way of personal conversation, concerned how busy he was that week.

And when I saw him later, he didn't bother to ask how I was doing with the new program he had demonstrated because he apparently didn't remember me.

Why do such people enter the healthcare professions?  They are knowledgeable and probably do good work but have no training in what used to be called "the bedside manner." Many seem to dislike working with people!  Luckily, my family doctor and dentist not only refer to me by name but look at me, listen, and talk with me without any sense of rush. They are the models of how medical practitioners should be, but they are the exception.

Most of the technical aides and other doctors I encounter prefer to look at their charts or computer versions of my profile rather than at me. They rarely call me by name; if they do, they make minimal eye contact. They do not pay enough attention to me to treat me as a person.

You might excuse this as shyness, yet there is no excuse for poor manners. You might say everyone is overworked, with never enough time to devote to the person being treated. Yet, in the highly personal area of healthcare, when one must learn about and treat another's body, an awareness of the sensitivity of such a situation should call up some measure of respect--or at least simulated caring.

Rushing is, for me, a sign of disrespect: it tells me that the other person's "agenda" is much more important than I am, and it adds to the anxiety involved in any medical visit--even for personal training at a gym.  Am I not worth slowing down for--even for a few minutes?  Does the money I am spending not warrant some real attention?

I cannot, unfortunately, tell the Impersonal Trainer I met that he is incompetent or complain to his superiors since he is otherwise knowledgeable and well-trained. The session we had was useful.

But, like so many others in his profession, he does not know that anyone in the healing professions should do more than provide information: they care about people.  That should be, in a perfect world, the reason therapists, nurses, trainers, and doctors enter the medical field.

But this is not a perfect world. I just don't like being reminded how imperfect it is quite so often.

An Impersonal World

Every time I visit a medical specialist--not my family doctor or dentist, who give me good personal attention--I encounter the impersonal syndrome, which consists of never hearing my name, first or last, mentioned by the celebrated specialist for whose ten minutes of time I have had to wait for two months.

This happened again yesterday when my appointment was finally scheduled. After waiting for 45 minutes in a sterile room, with nothing to look at but dull walls, the man himself appears, seems to shake my hand and reassure me my case is of no great importance; therefore he evinces little interest in me because he can't do surgery and therefore won't make any money from me. At no point did he refer to me as "Mr. Schiffhorst." Or even "Gerald," widely used by the assistants who are total strangers to me. Or "sir." Their only interest is in seeing my insurance cards. They seem pleased when I leave, wishing me a good day: one less patient to deal with.

Escaping from the specialist's office, my wife and I headed for a favorite restaurant, where the server, having seen my credit card at the end of the meal, called me by name, even pronounced correctly. As a result, he got a generous tip.

It happens so rarely that I am given such personal attention that it comes as a shock. I guess the decline in civility has to do with the speed of our culture and the population growth, or with the fact that most people are doing work they don't really want to do. One would think that, with the decline in the economy, clerks and servers would go out of their way to say "thank you, Mr. Schiffhorst" or whatever.

But the most common response I get in stores is: "There you go" or "Have a nice day." What happened to thanking the customer? And in the intimacy of a medical office, the use of the patient's name would seem to be taken for granted.

The junior medical staff are not trained in civility; the physician's assistant who examined me with rapid-fire questions that repeated the information I had provided in the 10 pages of forms I filled out was equally impersonal. But she smiled as she left the room.

My cat gets much more personal attention at the vet than I usually get in the medical offices I visit. The staff there reassure the frightened puss with soothing sounds ("Oh, Lizzie, you're going to be OK") that she cannot comprehend. The apprehension bordering on terror that I, as a human patient, might be feeling is never considered by a medical staff that, by and large, is on automatic pilot.

I hope that the newer medical schools, such as our own at the University of Central Florida, are doing something to train doctors to pay attention to the person in the room, to listen to what he or she has to say, and to look at the patient, not just the chart, and treat each person with respect and try at least to provide the reassurance they need.

Is this asking too much?