It’s been said in the world of business that people only buy two things: good feelings and solutions to problems. In medicine, the single most important factor that brings patients through our doors isn’t a “toward” kind of desire, but an “away” one — away from feeling bad.
More specifically, it is pain and fear that most often cause patients to call and ask for an appointment. They hopefully leave with good feelings and solutions to their problems, but that only happens when we have the knowledge, resources and, perhaps most important, the time to give them the relief they seek from us.
I am not considering the purely administrative functions we perform, but even some of them are more “away” desires, like patients needing a work excuse due to illness out of fear of otherwise losing their jobs. Even getting a flu shot or a physical is often rooted in pure fear of illness.
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