I PLAY A DOCTOR ONLINE

One of the odd things is that the people here keep addressing me as "Dr. Tae". I wasn't sure if they were trying to be cute (many of the young people at the church I used to attend called me Dr. Tae), or if it was because they had confused my surname with my given name: since Kim is often a Western first name, I thought that they might not be sure which name was which. I'd contemplated clarifying the matter, but I've discovered that it seems that everyone is addressed as such - people with titles are always called by their title, if they are comfortable around you they use your given name, and surnames are reserved for formal settings - that explains it!

Today seems more promising in terms of doing actual development rather than doing the stop-gap measure of local continuing education lectures. Okay, so it's only really my second full day here, but still, my heart really sank when the doc yesterday said that I could help by giving lectures. Which I'd happily do if that's what they needed and wanted, of course. But I think I was asking the wrong question: rather than asking what I could do for them, I think I should be asking what it is that they think they need, what they think their system needs, and trying to figure out how I might address that need. Of course, assessing their needs as an outsider is also important, but asking them the right questions might go a long way.

It's funny; I was just chatting with a primary care doctor, and he started listing a number of complaints (or needs): people don't have access to their primary care doctor, who often doesn't want (or can't, by law!) deal with emergencies, so the patients begin to self-refer to emergency departments which are then inundated with primary care patients; EMS often is unable or has difficulty contacting hospitals they're going to, so patients often arrive to the surprise of the emergency staff; there's a disconnectedness between secondary/hospital care and primary care, so often a patient is discharged with no communication between the hospitalist and the primary care provider resulting in loss to follow-up. Listening to this litany of problems began to feel awful familiar, and I didn't have the heart to tell him, buddy, you and I are in the same boat, and that all of the resources of the world's premiere superpower wouldn't necessarily ameliorate all of these problems! I guess I'll let him discover the awful truth for himself... later... and then we can have group therapy...