Choosing a Doctor

Brown-eyed, bobbed-haired Dr. Marian Staats Newcomer, 47, of Manhattan, remembers the qualms she suffered when a Syracuse University nose & throat specialist wanted to remove her tonsils. Although at the time she was a medical student of that University, she scooted home to her family doctor. "I knew," said she last week, "this beloved physician was not in a position to tell me more about my throat than the man who had already spoken so authoritatively on the subject. But he did know a great deal about my general health and background and I wished to add his opinion to that of the specialist who happened to make the examination."

Her family physician sent her back to a Syracuse nose & throat specialist who operated on the tonsils, was later obliged to call in a general practitioner to treat a "puzzling pleurisy" which Medical Student Newcomer soon developed. She recovered, was graduated and licensed to practice medicine, went to Paris for postgraduate study, returned to Manhattan "to establish and run semi-public clinics for the so-called white-collar classes." She learned enough about what patients think of doctors to publish an emotional book on the subject last week.*

The volume's most useful chapter was on "Choosing a Doctor." Dr. Newcomer's advice: Let a stranger sick in a big city apply to the Academy of Medicine or similar institution for the name of an able doctor who probably knows how to treat the illness and will not charge more than the patient can afford. Elsewhere sick strangers "must rely upon hospitals" or upon the county medical society.

Realizing how coldly hospital admitting clerks behave, Dr. Newcomer urges: "Do not let the rebuff of a clerk . . . prevent you from going further than the admitting desk. You may always, if there is time, write to the superintendent of the hospital for information. . . . You may also write to the hospital and ask for the annual report or the year book. These publications contain a list of the staff physicians.

"A person who knows that he is going to locate permanently in a strange and large city would do well to obtain letters of introduction from a physician of the community from which he is about to move. . . . Choose, then, a man who is known as a general practitioner or an internal medical man, rather than a surgeon or a specialist for your personal medical adviser."

Herewith Dr. Newcomer's solution of a frequent patient-doctor quandary: "If you consult a doctor who, you believe, does not understand you or your case, you should feel perfectly at liberty to change physicians. The polite, kind way to make this switch is to notify the doctor, either verbally, or by letter, that you have decided to dispense with his service. A doctor appreciates this frankness. However, he is so accustomed to handling human nature that if you say nothing at all to him and simply go to another physician, he will feel you have acted well within your rights."

* BEWILDERED PATIENT--Marian Staats Newcomer--Hale, Cushman & Flint ($1.75).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.