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Practice Can Be Fun

With care, a little humor can be the right prescription for your practice

JACK RUNNINGER, O.D.

“My wife referred me to you,” a new patient once told me. “She said I would really enjoy it because y’all are a bunch of nuts.”

“She didn’t mention the quality of our work?” I asked in a mock hurt tone of voice.

“Nah,” he said. “Just that y’all seemed to have such a good time with your patients.”

Not only can your practice be a lot more enjoyable when you interject a little humor, but also it can attract patients. Another example:

I examined a music professor at a local college and discovered her refraction was O.D. –1,50 –1.25 X 145 and O.S. plano –5.25 X 170. So I told her before we got down to the serious business:

“Your diagnosis is that you have one bad eye, and one damned bad eye.” It tickled her, and for years afterward she referred many new patients to us, all of whom asked me, “Did you really tell Dr. Pomeroy she had one bad eye, and one damned bad eye?”

Pomposity’s a no-no

Of course, you must be careful of how you use humor and with whom. You obviously don’t say to a patient, “Ha, ha, ha. You got yourself a big old case of glaucoma there.” But I don’t think people like pompous doctors. I was talking one day to a security guard at a hospital. After a while, he said, “Ain’t you a doctor?” I told him yes, I was an optometrist.

“I like doctors like you who don’t act like they’re doctors,” he said.

Now that I’m retired and am the patient rather than the doctor, I find that I enjoy doctors who have a sense of humor. Like:

My achin’ back

I went to see neurosurgeon Dr. Paul Ferguson to find out what was wrong with my achin’ back. After numerous tests, X-rays, etc. he said to me:

“Your diagnosis is that you’ve got a lousy back.”

“Look,” I said. “The only enjoyment we older folks get is to get to boast about how bad our infirmities are. We’re happy when we can say, ‘My doctor says I have the worst case of resorbitaderosis he’s ever seen.’ And everyone is very impressed, and he becomes the center of attention.

“Now how impressed are people going to be when they ask my diagnosis, and all I can say is, ‘The doctor says I have a lousy back?’ Can’t you state it in more scientific language.”

“Of course I could,” he replied, “but I always try to explain to patients what’s wrong in terms they can understand,” he one-upped me.

Kids, too

Particularly with children, exams can proceed more easily, successfully, and comfortably with entertainment as part of the exam. An optometrist once told me about a system he used on children that made the exam proceed more smoothly. He’d find out from the child’s mother what they’d had for breakfast that morning. Then during testing, he’d hold up his ophthalmoscope and say:

“I can look in your eye with this instrument and see what you had for breakfast.” The kid would look at him like he was loony. Until he did it. He said the child was very entranced and cooperative for the rest of the exam.

“Take what you do seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.” Good words to live by in your practice. OM

JACK RUNNINGER, OUR CONSULTING EDITOR, LIVES IN ROME, GA. HE’S ALSO A PAST EDITOR OF OM. CONTACT HIM AT RUNNINGERJ@COMCAST.NET.