Greetings from a sunny and unusually mild Elkins Park! We’ve been pretty lucky this summer so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather remains nice, at least through next week when we welcome our largest entering class for Orientation, culminating with our White Coat Ceremony on Thursday. Pretty exciting stuff!
Earlier this week, I had the absolute pleasure of hosting Dr. Hank Brown, the interim president of Arcadia University. We had the opportunity to discuss the breadth of collaboration our two universities have been engaged in as well as potential for additional areas to explore. For those of you who are not aware, we have an agreement with Arcadia that guarantees a certain number of seats for qualified students in our Occupational Therapy and Optometry programs. Similar agreements are being finalized for both Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology. Students have to meet our academic criteria prior to being enrolled at Salus. This, along with other areas of cooperation, really takes advantage of our proximity to Arcadia as well as their excellent undergraduate programs.
Also a reminder about next week’s White Coat Ceremony, which will be held at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, August 17 at 2 p.m. - this is the first time we’re holding the event in the city and this venue. Hopefully, many of you will be able to attend. Vice Admiral Forrest Faison, the Navy Surgeon General, will be our guest speaker, and I know he’ll have a great message for our new “white coaters.”
Finally, I wanted to share an experience I recently had with a local healthcare provider. I was referred by my dentist to see another dentist for a second opinion. When I called for the initial appointment, I was greeted with, “Hello, welcome to our office. What type of dental insurance to you have?” After all that, they informed me I would receive an email from them with “further instructions.” I did receive the email that evening with a term-paper worth of questions to fill out that I was “instructed” to bring with me for my initial appointment. Today, I received both a text and phone call “requiring” me to show up 15 minutes early for my appointment which is sometime next week.
I’m sharing this with you because, in my opinion, it’s a great example of how NOT to treat a patient, and I hope our students especially take note. If we are to be truly patient-centered healthcare providers, then a high degree of both empathy and respect needs to be shown every patient we see. In the interactions I had with the dentist's office I felt they were not respectful of me or my time, but rather was both demanding and dispassionate. Requiring a patient to be in the office early is very convenient for the office but doesn’t take into account a patients schedule. Additionally, there are many nicer ways to say that. I think I would not have had such a negative reaction to this if they would asked me to “Please see if I could get to the office 15 minutes early to complete any additional paperwork, etc.” as opposed to “requiring” me to be there. So, if I arrive 10 minutes early as opposed to 15 or I arrive at my appointed time are they not going to see me? I sure hope not, but that the impression I have. Never did I hear a “please” or “thank you” during any of my interactions.
So, the lesson I want to pass on is this: while we need our patients to provide necessary information to us so we can provide optimum care and yes, also be reimbursed, and we would like to remain on schedule, there are ways to do this that projects respect and empathy. My expectation and hope is that we treat all of our patients with that respect and empathy so they leave our clinics feeling special and well cared for.
On that note - here’s wishing everyone a great weekend. Please be safe and come back next week energized to welcome our new students!
Mike
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