My waiting room has a sign asking patients to turn off their cell phones when they are taken to an exam room. Practically everyone ignores the sign or conveniently forgets about their phone, until it starts chirping in the middle of an office visit. I once bought a photo of Bobby Knight screaming and having a temper tantrum on the basketball court. Everyone around here knows the famous coach, and my intention was to make an exam room poster with a caption reading, "I want you to turn off your cell phone!" Inertia got the better of me, and I never made the poster.
I used to feel that the noisy ring tones coming from patients’ phones were a rude and disrespectful intrusion into the sanctified atmosphere of the exam room. Everyone has a cell phone these days, and my attitude has gradually changed. Keeping patients cooped up in a boring little exam room, with only some stale old magazines for entertainment, isn’t fair, especially since I’m frequently late for appointments. Smart phones are much more amusing than my old magazines, and patients with phones tend to be happier and more forgiving about my tardiness, so banning phone use doesn’t help my popularity.
Patient cell phones can also be very helpful. Many times a patient can’t recall some key detail about their medication. They might only recall that they started a new little white pill, but they can’t recall its name or its dosage. Patients frequently whip out their phones and call home. They speak with a family member who can read them the prescription bottle, which is much faster than any other option I have for retrieving that critical information. In addition, patients frequently use their phones to show me photos of their swollen joints or other clinical findings.
This is the information age and the era of instant communication, and holding people incommunicado is usually deemed unacceptable, rude, or insensitive. I recently entered an exam room and a woman was talking on her cell phone. She was a little bit slow to say good-bye to her caller, so I shuffled papers for a few moments while she finished her call. I asked her whom she had been speaking to (I’m a doctor – I’m licensed to snoop), and she told me it was her son who had enlisted in the navy a few months earlier. Like any parent, she was concerned about her son, and happy that she could stay in touch. It would have been insufferably pompous for me to demand that she not use her phone.
I still have my photo of Bobby Knight that I bought on eBay. Perhaps I can still make a poster and get my money’s worth. Perhaps I’ll change the caption to "I want you to have your flu shot!"
Dr. Greenbaum is a rheumatologist who practices in Greenwood, Ind.