Dear Amy: Bringing a friend to the doctor

[cereta]

Dear Amy: I work in a medical clinic and would like to weigh in on the practice of people bringing friends with them to their appointments.

Unless another person is needed to help with medical issues, I find it very annoying for people to bring an entourage.

I have had patients bring five friends or relatives with them. It is disruptive.

People need to know: Your entourage will not be allowed in to watch you have your test done, so please don't ask. It is a medical test, not a live performance at the theater. — Annoyed Practitioner

Dear Annoyed: Well said.

Comments

[cereta]

I understand staff not wanting a large number of people there. However, instances in which I have brought a friend include: times when I was nervous about whatever decisions were being made or results were being revealed (including my Level 2 ultrasound, when I wasn't sure if my spouse could be there); times when I felt the doctor was not listening to me and needed moral support; times when the problem was not so much the doctor as my own assertiveness in conveying the seriousness of my symptoms (again, both of these situations when my spouse could not make it, and both situations under which I have accompanied my spouse to his doctors'* appointments); and various other situations even just including that I was very sick and wanted someone with me.

And it is patently untrue that you cannot have someone with you during a test across the board. Unless the test requires a sterile environment or involves exposure to radiation, there are many tests other people can be present to hold your hand or watch or whatever. And there are many, many that require that you have a driver.

*In fact, spouse and I shared a primary for a while, and this doctor made it clear that I was always welcome at spouse's visits, precisely because I would sometimes bring things up that spouse would underplay.

[busaikko]

I'm not native-level fluent at the best of times, and I will always bring a relative (husband, mother-in-law) or friend, and until recently that might have meant having several kids along as well. There's nothing quite as scary as having a doctor ask a question or hand over a form and not understand.

[synecdochic]

Patient advocate, people. Suck it!

[amadi]

Why do I get the feeling that the letter writer is exactly the sort of doctor who makes patients feel like they need to have someone at appointments with them so that they have someone on their side? Confrontational, doesn't listen, arrogant, sure that they know better than the patient about their own body, etc.

[cereta]

That was my very first thought as well.

[taselby]

Bite me, Dr. Snootypants. YOU don't get to decide who I need with me for support and comfort. And barring certain situations (surgery, x-rays, etc) I can have whomever with me for a test that I want.

Piss off. (And I'm really glad you're not my doctor, if only because you would have wasted my time and annoyed me before I fired you and found a better one.)

[concernedlily]

I don't think this is unreasonable. The letter-writer is using language that makes it pretty clear they're talking about people who come in with a crowd ('friends', not 'a friend', 'entourage', and an example of someone coming in with five people) - and a charitable reading of 'unless another person is needed to help with medical issues' could include a patient advocate or a companion to help with nerves and anxiety. I find it difficult enough to type accurately when people are looking over my shoulder, I can see where a medical practitioner might find it more difficult to carry out tests while being stared at (again, I think the language about performance suggests that a particularly disruptive kind of accompaniment is what they're talking about).

It also sounds to me from the sentence about 'weighing in' that this might be part of a longer/existing conversation in that column that hasn't been reproduced here (since it's not really a problem in its own right!) which makes me wonder whether the issues about the right to companionship has been discussed already and this person is just chiming in to point out that people bringing others into their appointment need to consider how many, for what purpose, and the effect on the medical practitioner.