Managing Expectations During Winter

At least part of my job includes managing people's expectations in terms of outcomes and how well treatments work.  This is especially important in the winter time when we get bombarded with people who mostly have colds that don't really have prescription treatments.  Over the counter symptom management medicines and time treat these illnesses.  Throw in a periodic influenza case and pneumonia and I'm left with deciding if I should treat people symptomatically, with antibiotics, or with antivirals.  From my perspective the decision usually isn't too difficult if I can get a set of vitals and perform an exam.  Where things get tricky is when people call the office and request antibiotics over the phone, which happens several times per week (as a side note, I have never even thought about calling a doctors office and requesting medicines over the phone).  There are so many things wrong with that scenario that I'm not even going to get into it here, but the answer is almost always no.  I'm upfront about it with my own patients so they know what to expect.  Where people are left disappointed at times is when I'm covering for other doctors who do call in medicines over the phone because then they are confused when I won't do it.  I sometimes get disappointment when people come in for an office visit and I don't prescribe antibiotics but usually if I explain the situation (i.e. only 0.5%-2% of sinusitis cases are caused by bacteria) they are OK with it.

Prior to the holidays we may have bad weather but at least there is something to look forward to. Now that the holidays are over there is nothing to look forward to for another 3 months or so until spring time arrives.  This isn't a big deal per se except that the weather sucks.  It took me an hour to get to work on Tuesday (usually takes 30 minutes) due to the snow the night before.  Every inch of skin that I possess is so dry there isn't enough lotion in the world to keep it moisturized.  And this afternoon I am trying to somehow fit a Christmas tree into a bag that is half as big as the tree.  If I didn't have family ties to the area there is a strong possibility I would move to the Carolinas or some place with a more temperate climate.