As I finished the endless clicking, the clinic day came to a close.

Clicking to begin and end phone visits.

Clicking to get on and off Zoom visits.

The endless video game clicking that is life as a physician documenting electronic health records. Too bad I have never been a gamer; maybe some who are can imagine amidst all of this they are in a scene from a Nintendo or Playstation classic.

Clicking boxes to satisfy coders, billers. Clicking to verify my RVUs and my worth as a cog in the health system machine. Clicking to keep insurance companies from refusing to pay.

Clicking to help my patients? Not sure.

I sighed with exhaustion.

100 percent show rate. Again.

I whisper, “I miss the no-shows from pre-COVID,” hoping that Hippocrates doesn’t hear me. (If a well-intentioned, all-alone pandemic physician whispers this in the woods, does the tree that falls actually make a sound?)

In primary care, those no-shows gave us a chance to catch our breath. They afforded us a break from all the clicking. A chance to rush to the bathroom or say hi to a colleague.

Now, there is no such reprieve. We sit and see one after another. Often, a day in the clinic goes by without even a conversation with anyone beyond my medical assistant. I barely move, mustering a few hundred steps in a full workday.

I try to convince ourselves that we are doing “real” medicine, having a “real” connection.

The only thing “real,” at least at the end of this day, is two hands tired from clicking.

You know, it is not no-shows that I really miss.

I miss seeing real people, including that tense excitement before entering the patient room, neither doctor nor patient quite sure what to expect.

I miss real in-person moments with my patients – tears of joy and sadness shed together. Tears just don’t happen the same in virtual visits.

I miss the chance to gently place the stethoscope bell on the elder’s chest.

I miss checking the infant’s rash to then reassure parents it isn’t life-threatening like Google had told them it was.

I wonder if my patients miss seeing me nearly as much as I miss seeing them.

Anthony Fleg is a family physician who blogs at Writing to Heal.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com