No matter how hard we try to run on-schedule, most patients usually experience some down time in our waiting rooms. So, in the honored tradition of our ancestors, we supply magazines to read.
These days – the era of iPads – many bring their own reading material, but a good percentage still don’t and leaf through the glossies out there.
I try not to subject them to much. You won’t see drug rep pamphlets in my lobby. I get a free subscription to a celebrity gossip rag (thanks, pharma), but it goes straight to recycling on arrival. Many of my patients are seriously ill, and the last thing I want to do is have them read about people who think the worst thing in the world is to have make-up with the wrong foundation color. If professional celebrities want to see real problems, they can hang out at my office, or (better yet) an oncologist’s.
So what do I put out? I get a local parenting magazine, and my mother’s friend donates recent issues of Sunset and Good Housekeeping (thanks, Nancy). People are okay with them.
My dad once got me a big coffee table book about the history of medicine. He found it at a garage sale for 25 cents. On a whim, I put it out, and it’s been surprisingly popular. I even have a patient who makes a note of where he left off when called back, so that he can resume at his next visit.
Six months ago, while straightening up a home bookcase, I found a few "Far Side" collections, and put them out in my lobby. They quickly passed the magazines in popularity, and cemented my already solid reputation as an eccentric.
I don’t know how many other doctors have done this. I’ve heard there’s a doc on the west side of town who only has the complete P.G. Wodehouse "Bertie & Jeeves" series in his lobby. I think that would be perfectly fine, too, but takes longer to read, and I try to minimize waiting room time.
One of my strangest discoveries about private practice is that my most popular lobby magazines aren’t magazines at all. And I found them on my own bookshelf.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.