Patients interpreting their own portal results

[u/Princessgargoyle]

Attending physician new to practicing in a more affluent area. How are you all dealing with patients asking for explanations for each out-of-range lab result that popped up in their patient portal?

I’m finding this aspect of my new site to be very frustrating and time consuming to have to convince the patient why the google interpretation of their isolated eosinophilia or glucose of 100 does not align with my “Great news! Everything looks good!”

[u/Sad_Instruction_3574]

I trained in an extremely affluent area. I refuse to deal with those patients again. The county and low income population has their own challenges and sometimes it feels like talking to a rock but I’d take that haha.

[u/Princessgargoyle → u/Sad_Instruction_3574]

It is a unique freedom to simply do right by the patient

[u/Playcrackersthesky → u/Sad_Instruction_3574]

Right? Give me urban university hospital hell

[u/Background-Nothing15 → u/Playcrackersthesky]

As someone currently in urban university hospital hell this made me laugh and also made me feel better about working in said hell.

[u/vladvorkuv → u/Sad_Instruction_3574]

Feeling strange applying talking about serving the underserved for my entire career. But 10 years of prehospital experience has taught me that my temperament does much better caring for people who are in a lower SES than those that have never had to lift a finger for anyone but themselves. I don't respond well to entitelement.