Think Twice Before Dismissing Even the Unlikeliest Complaints

The odds are that the most outrageous concerns patients present with can be easily explained away, and often to the patient’s satisfaction (and relief). That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into them, though. Take the tale of a Gila Lyons, a writer who happens to have (and who has written extensively about) anxiety and panic disorders. For some time she experienced ringing in her ears, accompanied by a “prickly tickle” as she described it in an article she wrote for Oprah Magazine. At first she dismissed it, thinking it could “just” be a manifestation of her ongoing battle with anxiety. When she finally mentioned it to her primary care physician during an unrelated visit, the physician took a cursory look and dismissed the complaint as probably due to dry ear wax. The feeling continued for a few days after the visit—until an insect, a silverfish roughly an inch long, squirmed and fell out of the affected ear. Lyons returned to the doctor to have her ear more closely examined, only to discover that the physician hadn’t even entered the ear complaints in the chart. Lyons asked for a referral to an ENT for further evaluation, but the physician refused to provide one (several times). That fueled tension between doctor and patient, to the point that Lyons ultimately complained to the practice manager about the physician. She eventually got the referral, but harbored anger toward the doctor she had presented to initially. The anecdote is a valuable one for urgent care providers for a couple of reasons: 1) Even if a patient has presented with “mystery” complaints in the past, each new visit should be viewed with fresh eyes. To rely on an old axiom, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and you don’t want to miss the one complaint in 10 that will prove concerning; and 2) It costs nothing to treat patients—even those who may be trying your patience—with respect and sympathy; at the very least, they will feel they’ve been treated well and continue to frequent your practice.