You certainly expect your doctor to listen to you when you go in for an appointment. The first step in making a proper diagnosis should simply be getting information from the patient. Additionally, if you’ve been dealing with a serious condition, you’re probably very emotionally invested in figuring your situation out. You have been thinking about your concerns endlessly, so you definitely assume your doctor will at least listen to you talk about them.
But is your doctor actually listening? They might not be, and that can lead to allegations of medical malpractice. A doctor who won’t give patients a proper level of attention can make mistakes or overlook important details.
Doctors are busy
One potential issue that doctors face is simply that they’re busy. Their schedule is often packed. They may only have a few minutes to see each patient. You may consider your appointment with your doctor to be the biggest event of the day, and maybe you’ve planned your whole day around it. But your doctor may see it as just one more 15-minute appointment among many of them. They may rush in and out of that appointment without giving you the attention you deserve.
Doctors interrupt their patients
Studies have found that doctors tend to interrupt their patients after just 11 seconds. They usually do not give them very much time to talk at the beginning of that appointment. Some doctors will interrupt after as little as three seconds. If your doctor quickly interrupts you, are you going to miss giving them important information? Are they going to make the wrong diagnosis because they didn’t listen long enough to get the information that they needed? Once again, you can see how a doctor who is in a rush may not give you the type of care you deserve.
In situations like this, you may believe that your doctor’s negligence constitutes malpractice. They caused you harm because of the way they treated you. If you’ve suffered additional injuries as a result of their substandard care and you’re incurring high medical bills that go along with them, it’s time to seek legal guidance.
