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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

O is for Opinions

So I have a question. Have any of you ever had a doctor, either for yourself or a family member, that you liked 100%? That you had absolutely no qualms with?
Since I have become a parent, my little family has moved a lot, at least in my opinion. We have lived in 3 different states in the last 3 years. 2 on the west coast and one on the east coast. So needless to say I have gone through a few pediatricians. And I've had qualms with most of them. So I want to know if you think I am being to picky.
In Idaho, where my daughter was born, we were using Medicaid, and so we didn't have a lot of choice in what doctor we went to see. There was one clinic that I knew about, so that is where we went. My daughter had a really hard time putting on weight in her first month, and so we went to the doctors office a lot. One time that we were there the doctor told me that I needed to feed her every 2-3 hours even in the night time, because she obviously wasn't getting enough. The problems was, if I tried to feed her that often, she would get mad because she didn't want to eat yet, and she would just fight me, and scream. Well the doctor had the gall to tell me that because I was the parent, and she was the baby, I needed to make the decisions, babies can't make decisions. Oh she was making decisions all right. But I guess he has the right to have his own opinion too.
So I switched to a different doctor at the clinic. This doctor, I felt like, never listened to the questions I had about my child's health. He would ask me if I had questions, and after one or two answers, he would start the examination, and not listen to me any more through out the visit.
So we switched to doctor number three at that clinic, the last doctor there. This doctor, the only qualm I had with him, was simply not agreeing with some advice that he gave me. When my daughter at 6 months came down with some diarrhea, he told me to not nurse her for a whole day and just feed her pedialyte. I didn't think this would do her any good, so I didn't follow his advice, and she still got better.
Then we moved to Virginia, and we only lived there for a year, and it was my daughters second year of life, and so we didn't visit the doctors office a whole lot, and I really didn't have any qualms with him.
Then we moved to Washington State, where we now reside. We moved here with a new job about 20 days before my son was born. The insurance for this new job required that we have a PCP. So I called up a local doctors office and asked if they had any pediatricians accepting new PCP patients, and took the doctor that they had available. Now that my son is 3 months old, I have seen this doctor for a few well baby checkups, and my son also has an issue with congestion. He has been congested pretty much constantly since he turned 1 month old. Now due to the fact that he is so small, I have taken him in to the doctors office 3 different times, when the congestion has gotten worse, just to verify that it isn't extremely serious. So I think in the last 3 months I have probably been to the doctors office at least 7 times. Now I know that doctors see a lot of patients, and it has got to be hard to remember every one, but is it too much to ask that he at least review my son's chart before he comes in and sees him?
The doctor never asks how previous issues have been resolved. He doesn't remember that I have 2 kids unless I have both of them there with me. He asks me the same questions over and over. And then yesterday I took him in, after he has had a bad cough for the last 3 weeks. And the doctor didn't even refer to my son by name, until I used his name in talking to my daughter. He would just refer to him as "your son" or "your boy". This drives me crazy. But he seems to be a good doctor, so I am just letting it go.
But tell me, do you think I am being to picky?

1 comment:

Shannon said...

I think that you're not alone in your quest for a good doctor that is personal and truly cares about his patients. Hopefully you can live somewhere long enough to enable you to try doctors until you find one you like. Ask for recommendations from people you know in the area--that's helpful.
Good luck!