Not too long ago, I had an assignment in our fast track area, working with a notoriously slow provider. Folks were waiting longer than usual for their non-emergent and often not-even-urgent complaints, and getting more upset than usual. I had one family start to carry on:
"Is there only one doctor in the ER??"
"OMG, this hospital sucks, someone could be dying and they'd be waiting for hours!"
Well, the second one did it. I turned to the family and said "There's one doctor in this section, so that more doctors can get to the dying patients in the other section quickly, so that they do not have to wait. Are you worried that your child might be dying? Because I can assure you, he is not."
Of course it didn't quiet them down, they kept going on and on about what the "poor dying people" in the ER must be doing waiting all this time. I told them not to worry about those other patients, and what exactly I could do right now to help them. Surprisingly, that actually got them to quiet down.
I think the hard part about this time was that the provider really WAS moving slowly, despite my efforts to speed things along. And in keeping with my nightly theme of not biting my tongue, I actually told the provider that he needed to work more quickly and multitask better in the fast track area. You can probably guess how that went over.
