Zapping Zingers
You know them, you’ve received some, and so have your colleagues: those zinger questions—the tough questions your patients ask that momentarily throw you for a loop. Sometimes they’re simple, other times complex, and their psychological origin can be multifaceted. In any case, responding to zingers requires calm, diplomacy, and tact.
“How you respond to the inevitable zingers depends in large part upon your preparation,” writes Laura Sachs Hills in her Nov/Dec 2005 article in the Journal of Practice Management.1 That preparation, she suggests, is best established using staff training, group work, brainstorming, and role-play scenarios.
Both hospitalists and primary care physicians, writes Bernard Lo, MD, must be prepared for patients to ask difficult questions or make unsettling comments, even about the hospitalist system itself.2 Anticipating the nature of those comments or questions is likely to help the hospitalist respond in the moment.
“I don’t see these so much as zingers as challenging or uncomfortable questions or attempts by patients to assert some control,” says Steven Pantilat, MD, FACP, associate professor of clinical medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and past president of SHM.
Dr. Pantilat believes that the term “zinger” can imply they are used with malicious intent, yet, he comments, “I’m not sure they are, even if they are an attempt to exert control or challenge the physician. I suspect they arise from fear or other responses.” Below, some of the zingers Dr. Pantilat has dealt with.
How long have you been a doctor? “I’ve now been one long enough not to be flustered by this question, but many hospitalists are young and may be taken aback,” says Dr. Pantilat. “It’s a challenge to the doctor’s authority and expertise.”
Doc, you look so young is a related comment, believes Dr. Pantilat—one that can be interpreted as a compliment or a zinger. “My standard response is always, ‘I’m old enough to take that as a compliment,’ ” he says. “These days I really mean it.”
Vineet Aurora, MD, hospitalist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, says she is sometimes asked, “How old are you?”
