Dear patients,

We are happy to have you in our lives.  We came into medicine to take care of you.  Some of us because we wanted to help you to win the fight against cancer.  Others of us because we love delivering your babies.   Others because we wanted to have the skill to make sure you survive that heart attack or that terrible accident.  Others because we wanted to do our best to help you to live the healthiest lives you possibly can.  The list goes on and on.

We enjoy spending time with you in the office and getting to know you better.  We enjoy hearing about your families.

We enjoy when we are able to make your hospital stay more pleasant.

We are glad when you all have insurance whether you are rich or poor so we can give you all the best possible care we can.

We are sorry if nowadays we often seemed rushed. We now work under time pressures which are beyond our control.

We would like to give you enough time that you leave feeling happy and satisfied with your visit and that all your needs were properly addressed.    While sometimes it’s difficult to figure how much time that would be, we know that it is often more time than you get now.

We are sorry that we have closed some of our offices where we tried to do just that but doing that is now making us bankrupt and preventing us from being able to provide for our families.

We are sorry if we sometimes appear to spend too much time on the computer.  It is helpful for some of us whose handwriting is not the best and also to access your information if you get care at other places besides the offices and hospitals that we are seeing you in, but the technology is still cumbersome, and the requirements are onerous.  We hope to make it better and are trying

We are sorry if we sometimes appear grumpy.   It is certainly not your problem, and you should not have to put up with it.

We are sorry that some of us are leaving medicine.  It is certainly not because of you or your fault but we know you don’t deserve grumpy, tired, overworked and stressed doctors and some of us no longer have it in us to give you the care you deserve.

But that is why we are trying more than ever to come together.  Because at the heart of it all we want to be able to serve you in the manner you deserve.  We want to bring our best to you but a lot is getting in the way, and we are trying to fix that.

Monique Rainford is an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com