First Day Back

It's my first day back in Internal Medicine and it has been challenging. We normally start clinic at 9am. Matt showed up at 8:45 and I thought, wow, we can get a running start. I already had 3 patients checked in, so I brought the first one back early. Or so it seemed. Unfortunately, I discovered that the scheduling template was changed and our patients had been booked starting at 8am. So we weren't 15 min early, we were 45 min behind. We were booked at 8am for the entire month. After a phone call or two and a minor freak-out, we started clinic. As of press time, we are an hour and twenty minutes behind. Now I know some of you are thinking that doctors run behind all the time. Not this one. We are very punctual. The only times we run behind are in cases of unforseen disaster such as this, or people really sick at the hospital, or - and this is my biggest pet peeve and the #1 reason we get behind - people show up late. So we have spent the majority of the morning apologizing to cranky guests. They are justified in their crankiness, as am I since it was not my fault and I will not be getting a lunch today.

I pray it gets better.