Focus on Family Medicine

Dealing with Doctors

In this episode, Dianne and Dr. Crossnoe talk with their first guest, Dr. Jared Brinker, about the specialty of Family Medicine. Dianne is excited to interview Dr. Brinker, as he is her own personal physician.
Dr. Crossnoe does a brief erratum from the first two episodes.
Dr. Brinker summarizes his residency at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, including additional training in Maternal Fetal Medicine. He discusses how his practice has become more comfortable in the last few years compared to the first few. He discusses rounding on patients at the hospital. Dianne reveals that Dr. Brinker delivered her second child and her experience with that.
Dianne asks how patients contact Dr. Brinker. Dr. Crossnoe uses this opportunity to discuss how call works for physicians. Dr. Brinker demonstrates how call works in his OB call group.
Dianne asks Dr. Brinker about his nurse practitioners, and he talks about how much his two NPs help him in the clinic. She asks him about why people need a family medicine physician, and Dr. Brinker talks about the advantages of family-based care. Dr. Crossnoe discusses why people need primary care doctors in the first place.
Dr. Crossnoe and Dr. Brinker talk about the size of their practices, giving an idea of how many patients they see per day. They discuss how much work they have to do outside of the exam room for each visit, and mention two journal articles (linked above) which have studied this. They discuss the difficulty of balancing this clerical work with the needs of patients.
Dr. Brinker discusses what he wishes patients knew about medicine, and how he has experienced the system from the other side when his wife had a surgery. They then discuss the difficulties that doctors also face in dealing with the system, often due to insurance requirements. He discusses how his staff helps with this.
Dr. Crossnoe asks Dr. Brinker his favorite and his least favorite things about his practice of medicine. Spurred by Dianne's story, they discuss the importance but also the difficulty in giving patients the attention they deserve.
Dianne asks Dr. Brinker about "Dr. Google". He discusses the pros and cons of the massive amount of information available on the internet.
To end the episode, Dianne asks Dr. Brinker some "fun" questions, including what TV doctor he relates to and what he would like to do if he was not a physician.
Email address: [e-mail]
Episode Links:
Tethered to the EHR: Primary Care Physician Workload Assessment Using EHR Event Log Data and Time-Motion Observations | Annals of Family Medicine (annfammed.org)
Revisiting the Time Needed to Provide Adult Primary Care | SpringerLink