“We’ll have one strawberry sugar cone, two chocolate swirls, and a mocha almond.”
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“Dr. Wilkoff, I haven’t seen you in ... must be 5 years. You look great! How’s retirement going?”
“You look great too, Kim. The neighborhood has needed an ice cream parlor like yours for a long time. How’s the family?”
Alerted by the commotion of our catching up, Kim’s husband came outside to see what was going on. Looking at my wife, he said, “You know he saved our daughter’s life?”
Well, not exactly. A timely referral to a psychologist I knew was good with eating disorders had started the slow process of returning their anorectic daughter to health. I thanked him and tried to put a more historically correct spin on his story.
Most of my encounters with former patients and their parents aren’t as dramatic as this one at Kim’s Ice Cream Shack, but they always leave me with a warm, positive feeling that stays with me all day. Every now and then they include a compliment or a thank you, but most of the time the conversations are dominated by questions about how the other are doing and what our families are up to.
One of the perks of living in the town where you practice is that your patients also are your neighbors. Not every physician views this proximity as a positive, but for me, it was a gift that has kept on giving after I retired.
Our house phone number was always listed in the phone book, and I can count on the fingers of two hands how many times in 40 years that I received what I would consider an inappropriate or invasive call. Our office offered evening and weekend hours and a generous schedule of phone-in call times. But I’m convinced that it was the neighbor-to-neighbor relationship that kept the work/home balance intact. Even though I may have helped a plumber and his wife with their sick children, that professional arrangement didn’t include a free pass to call him after hours if I knew my leaking faucet could wait until the weekend was over.
Dr. William G. Wilkoff
By the same token, when a patient or a customer is also your neighbor there is an unspoken ethic that the service you provide must be your best effort. That’s not an admission that I was in the habit of offering substandard care to “folks from away,” but there is special motivation when your work is being scrutinized by people you’re likely to see next week at the grocery store checkout.
Office visits with neighbors often tended to take longer because there was a tendency to drift off topic and ask about a sibling’s baseball game I had read about in the paper or how the lobster catch was running that season. On the other hand, I must admit that I did my share of reporting (really it was bragging) on my own children’s accomplishments.
But now I’m reaping the benefits of those extra minutes invested in the office, because I suspect former patients and their families are more likely to want to reminisce when we meet in a restaurant or at the farmers’ market.
If you are a young physician and worrying about finding a good work/life balance, I urge you to consider living and working and then staying on in a place in which your patients also will be your neighbors. It will enrich your work experience and repay you many times over when it’s time to retire.
If you can’t find that place, at least treat your patients as though they were your neighbors.