Spooky Tales from the Glaucoma Clinic
According to the TV, some people call this Spooky Season. While I’ve never heard the term before and assume this is nothing more than a ploy to sell me candy corn, I’ll take this claim at face value. Since nothing is spookier than sharing campfire tales of horror and fright, allow me to describe my recent, spooktacular story from my time at the haunted glaucoma clinic. Or at least the glaucoma clinic haunted by operational inefficiencies and not-so-patient-centric-practices. Consider yourself warned, this is not a tale for the faint of heart! *Ominous laughter and thunder claps sound in the distance*
Due to a number of not particularly interesting reasons, I pushed off my quarterly visit to the glaucoma clinic. Eventually, I had to settle up with the ol’ eyeball gods. Today’s visit was a doozy!
- Though it was never messaged, the clinic was running an hour behind schedule
- Once I got back to the exam room, I had to request Ishihara’s Test for Colour Deficiency, something I ask for…well, every time I see my care team
- In her hurry to get my pupils dilated, the tech neglected to give me an eye exam, something that would have informed my care
- No one was concerned that my IOP, though in the normal range, was high for me
Things got really exciting when I was lead across the clinic for fundus photography. Something about my squinty eyes and delightful facemask tipped off the tech working the old ass Topcon machine to my background in ophthalmology. After lamenting the need to take a plethora of stereo images which would later be assembled using gum and tape and subsequently manually fed into Epic EHR, I was asked what it would for me to come onboard as clinic staff. Sorry, bud. This one’s on you.
Finally, when I saw my doc, she hadn’t reviewed any of my at home visual field reports and was unable to see my fundus photography because of…reasons. After a quick exam and cursory discussion, my doc tried to bolt out of the room before I pushed to ask a few questions. She was embarrassed but happy to take the time.
In the end, I didn’t get any of the guidance I was looking for. In fact, I’ll have to return to the clinic next month for additional testing that, arguably, should have been performed during this visit, thereby providing the information I needed.
Truth be told, I’m writing this quick and spooky post for two reasons:
- To express my frustrations and;
- In an attempt to put myself in the shoes of a patient who isn’t familiar with or comfortable advocating for themselves. While I didn’t get steamrolled, I didn’t manage to get all of my questions answered and will have to come back in November. If this is considered a productive visit, I can only imagine how poorly it would have gone for a less assertive patient
Originally published at https://richiekahn.wordpress.com
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