Avoiding the “Doorknob Phenomenon”

“The four familiar words physicians always dread come when the office visit is ending, doctor’s pen clipped back onto the white coat pocket and hand reaching for the door. “Oh, by the way,” the patient says. What comes next could be as innocuous as a harmless freckle or a bombshell. Doctors call it ‘the doorknob phenomenon.’ . . .

. . . Charon teaches a method she has adopted with her own new patients, whom she tells: ‘I’m going to be your doctor and I need to know a lot about your health and your body and your life’ and then I stop talking.'”

One of those solutions that is easy to implement in medical school, hard to execute in real life. An easy way to spend more time with patients? Stop the conveyor-belt practice of medicine, seeing patients every 15 minutes. Get insurance companies to reimburse appropriately. In other words, take the business out of medicine.

Of course, that would never happen – unless I change to a concierge practice.