Introduction

Dealing with Doctors

In episode one, Dianne and Dr. Crossnoe introduce themselves and discuss their motivation for starting the Dealing with Doctors podcast. Dr. Crossnoe discusses his background, family, and education. He explains that the primary motivation behind Dealing with Doctors is to provide a resource to patients in dealing with healthcare to understand how modern medicine works.
Dianne introduces herself as an administrator in the same healthcare system that Dr. Crossnoe works, and explains that her role in this series will be to ask the questions that regular, non-medical patients might want to know.
Dr. Crossnoe suggests that he probably won't know many of the questions that people may have, and so the format for this series for many shows will be to have guests on in various fields, both physician specialists as well as other roles in healthcare. Other shows will be done with Dianne and Dr. Crossnoe alone.
The hosts identify patients as the primary audience for Dealing with Doctors. They set the goal that this series will help patients understand the perspective of healthcare workers and how they can best communicate with physicians and other healthcare workers.
Dr. Crossnoe points out that a major problem in modern medicine is access to healthcare. He suggests that one significant cause of this is the lack of manpower in medicine, both for physicians and other workers. He points out that his practice, which is probably on the smaller side for primary care, consists of about 3800 patients for two providers, Dr. Crossnoe and his nurse practitioner Karen. He says that he thinks that the national average is around 2000 patients per provider in primary care.
Dr. Crossnoe suggests that a major way we are going to have to manage this problem will be through the better use of technology, including the internet and patient portals. Dianne asks about "Dr. Google", and Dr. Crossnoe suggests this can be a good and powerful tool, although it does come with some disadvantages. He says that the two major online resources he uses are UpToDate and the American Family Physician magazine (links below).
Dianne asks Dr. Crossnoe about crazy stories he has as a physician. Dr. Crossnoe points out the difficulty in sharing many of these things due to privacy concerns. All stories told on this podcast will either be completely fictitious (although realistic) or will have major changes in demographics and other protected information to make the patient unidentifiable. Dr. Crossnoe shares the difficulty that being a provider sometimes brings due to concern about patient's well-being. Dianne confirms that she has seen many providers in her job dealing with difficult situations.
The hosts then invite listeners to send their questions to their email at [e-mail].
Email address: [e-mail]
Episode Links:
Evidence-Based Clinical Decision Support System| UpToDate | Wolters Kluwer
AFP | AAFP