You have all most likely heard the story and watched the cell phone footage of the highly disturbing, forced deboarding of Dr. David Dao from United Airlines Flight 3411 on Sunday, April 9, 2017. If you already have, please forgive us for the brief recap. A United flight crew had to get to Louisville, Kentucky and to make room for them, four paying customers would have to deboard the plane. To solve the issue, United initially offered $400 to those willing to deboard and then upped the ante to $800 when no one took the offer. Still, with a plane full of customers who preferred to stay put, United took things into their own hands. A couple was told that they had been selected to deboard and got up and left the plane. When Dr. Dao's name was called, however, he did not move. You can click here and see Dr. Dao being forcefully removed from the plane. He hit his head on an armrest and was rendered unconscious prior to being drug off the plane by his arms. The vast majority of people who viewed the video, me included, were horrified. A few snickered and laughed. Some claimed that "he should have just gotten off the plane." But as I sat and watched the initial clip and then continued watching as the story unfolded and United Airlines repeatedly bungled the aftermath of their mistake, my mind drifted to our business. A few weeks ago we highlighted Fred Lee's book, If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 ½ Things You Would Do Differently. One of the excerpts we included from the book was, "Patients judge their experience by the way they are treated as a person, not by the way they are treated for their disease." For us, people aren't diseases. For United, passengers aren't tickets. I believe we have missed an opportunity if we continue to watch the unraveling of United Flight 3411 and fail to examine ourselves, our practices, and how we treat others. Every morning before we see patients, I sit down with our staff for a pre-clinic meeting where we review the schedules for the day and put together a plan to address any potential issues. I also try my best to remind them how they are to treat those that walk in our doors. I want the word compassion to be at the forefront of our minds as we serve our patients. Can we be successful in our practice if we do not show compassion? I don't know how we could truly treat a patient well if we failed to do this. To help in this process, we've focused a lot this past week on the word "empathy". To be empathetic is to understand or share in the feelings of another. I think that empathy is the driving force behind compassion. If we share in the feelings of our patients then it's easy to show compassion. What if the captain, flight attendants, security guards and, after the fact, the CEO of United had stopped to put themselves in Dr. Dao's shoes and had shown him compassion? Wouldn't things have been handled differently had they tried to understand and share his feelings? What about us? Can we have enough compassion for our patients? Imagine the impact that would be felt in healthcare if we swapped places with each of our patients and truly tried to understand how they felt both emotionally and physically. Even as I type the words, I can still picture Dr. Dao being forcefully removed from the plane. He has to be hurt and humiliated. United Airlines failed him on that Sunday. Our goal is to provide our patients with a quality of care that goes beyond the clinical side of things. We truly want to be driven by compassion and, as we treat each patient, put ourselves in their shoes. We can be called to more than this, but it can never be less. If someone on our staff reads this, I want them to be reminded that people aren't diseases. People are people. Our job is to serve them and have compassion on them. My hope is that United Airlines Flight 3411 isn't just one of the biggest debacles of 2017 that we quickly forget and move passed. My hope is that we watch and learn. No, not watch and learn what can happen to our business financially if we make such a mistake, but instead, let's examine ourselves and see how we can truly treat our patients with the compassion they deserve.
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