On Being Late, Part Two
Dr. Leon Benson
Being an orthopaedic surgeon is partly about fixing a specific problem, but mostly about being a people person. No one could do this job for more than a month if they didn’t have an affinity for human interactions. All of the problems that I see and have been trained to treat are interesting to me, but they would all blend together into an intolerable, unrecognizable, boring clump if I didn’t have the personal connections with the patients themselves. Personal connections require time and they are unpredictable. That’s what makes them “personal.” So after twenty years, I don’t as much see the next patient as a “carpal tunnel syndrome” person as much as a fourth grade teacher that works where I went to elementary school and who now has trouble holding those short, fat pieces of chalk. But these little conversations take up time. Sometimes they are brief, but sometimes they are long. Some patients have simple problems and are satisfied with a quick visit, but some patients will have a complicated problem or a complicated life, and these folks cannot be shortchanged.
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