This is likely a different take on continuity of care than you’re used to.

A few weeks ago, I touched on why building trust with your patients and their caregivers is important. Not only for doctors this applies to every service professional. When someone trusts a doctor, veterinarian, farrier, or an electrician they don’t want to see anyone else.

When I find a farrier I like it’s hard to get me to change.

Read my take on know, like, and trust factor here.

For example, when I was a young woman and thinking of starting a family, I was sad that my primary doctor, my dad’s partner, decided to leave Oakley. I’m thinking it’s time to start a family I said, you can’t leave now. He responded with the vets are perfectly capable of delivering babies. He was joking, of course.

Then when I was pregnant with my third child none of the local physicians would back up the ARNP that was providing my primary care. This was highly disappointing to me now I had get used to someone else.

With the two examples above I had to find someone else completely. Imagine how disappointed I was when my oncologist was out of the office for about six weeks in the middle of my treatment. I had at least three appointments with a locum tenens doctor. She was good enough, but I wasn’t happy about it and it would have been different if it had been a single appointment.

This was also one of the reasons that I had radiation at KU Med Center instead of at Hays. They didn’t have a permanent radiation oncologist at that time, and I didn’t want to see a bunch of different doctors.

Another issue with continuity of care that I see is how the doctors communicate with each other. Mike had several doctors at KU Med Center and sometimes it felt as if they weren’t communicating. It’s been even worse with my oncologists because they aren’t in the same town.

The road to health can be full of curves and bumps.

During Mike’s last hospital stay at KU Med I questioned his pulmonologist about this. I said it sometimes felt like his care was disjointed because the doctors weren’t talking to each other. This would have been a much harder conversation for me to start had I not respected and trusted this doctor.

Mike also turned down seeing another pulmonologist when his regular pulmonologist was going to be out of the office when we were going to be there. This meant that we ended up driving to Kansas City twice in two weeks.

Once a connection is formed, we are reluctant to have to try to make them with someone else. It’s human nature. Think about it the next time you call the same person you’ve used before to fix something at your house. Do you want to call someone you know and trust or take a chance on someone new?

If you’d like to see how the horses and I can help you form better connections connect with me here to set up a phone appointment.

When you find a doctor you like Nothing Else Matters.

Make a Connection in the comments below.

Onward! Time to Plan for Your Second Wind