Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.
As my wife’s permanent chauffeur, I spend much time in medical waiting rooms. Even though I have learned to bring my own entertainment, I have informally cataloged what is provided as reading and viewing material.
One clinic provides nothing because they believe that the reading material spreads germs. Two have taken out play areas for children on the same principle.
As a casual observer of marketing, I notice how the marketers have, as they will, found the captive audience. A few places provide the standard array of magazines, usually with a plastic cover over them on which are imprinted ads for the company which paid for the magazine.
Much more common is to devise ways to market medical services and products, almost entirely drugs, to the captives. Or is that victims? Let’s say patients or impatients, as is maybe more often the case. The two favorite media are TV screens and medical-interest magazines. The technology is slowly expanding. It usually extols the virtues of the organization holding you prisoner. Ads for drugs are also slowly creeping in.
I scan the medical-interest magazines before reading my Dickens or Hardy, two authors I read in waiting rooms because it takes an environment such as that to make them interesting. Most clinics contain two types of such magazines: a general medical health publication, or ill-health as I shall explain, and a magazine aimed at the focus of that waiting room, such as arthritis or neurology.
The content of these magazines has made two things clear. 1) No disease is real until someone famous gets it, or as second-best, the parent of a famous person. 2) There is a myriad of diseases of which I should be terrified, things of which I have never heard, which get catchy names as if Madison Avenue named them. Did it?
Overstatement is standard fare, especially on the cover. For instance one magazine on its cover suggested that all Boomers have a mysterious disorder called HepC, which turned out to be hepatitis C. The reason, as I read inside, is that we all, it seems, shot up drugs, shared toothbrushes, and participated in orgies. I guess I wasn’t invited.
The purpose of these magazines is ads for drugs, with long legal statements in very minute print, too small for most of the patients in the waiting rooms to read. Another Madison Avenue decision? The listed side-effects are more terrifying than anything Stephen King would dare write. All the ads tell me to ask my doctor about the drug, meaning to prescribe the drug. I tried to talk my wife into taking a list of the drugs in with her and asking her doctor about each of them. My wife has no sense of fun.
Doctors hate ads like that, and they hate articles which tell people that they have the latest dread disease. But I am quite sure the management of the clinic or hospital is placing them there and not the doctors.
The slowest passage of time known to humans is that spent in waiting rooms. People need distraction, but the content of the TV screens and the magazines seems to me so contrary to what people really crave or to the purpose of the visit.
What would you put in medical waiting rooms to distract and or comfort people?
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine Baboons!
Well, I don’t have a MEDICAL waiting room, I have a MENTAL HEALTH waiting room, AND I am the management. We have The Week and National Geographic, news mags; and we have travel mags, a local neighborhood newspaper, Better HOmes and Gardens, and a smattering of free mags that companies just send us–Food and Wine, Metro, In Style. None of the last “free” ones have we requested. THen there is tea, cocoa, and soothing music.
I am about to discover another medical waiting room’s treasure as I am off to Urgent Care after waking up with an eye infection. I will report back.
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Here are results of my experience: Remodelled Kitchens, Real Simple, BillBoard, MDWeb, HealthSource, Family Circle. I played with my phone.
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And how’s your eye?
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Infected glad in eyelid. Sore but now treated.
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That would be GLAND
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Good luck, Jacque! I just got over an eye infection, and I don’t recommend them. My friends have received Too Much Information in my emails about what it is like to struggle into the bathroom in the middle of the night when you cannot see through infected eyes, relieving yourself into a toilet you can locate with your knees but not see. I won’t go into more detail.
But what are we to put in the waiting room? It should be something that can be enjoyed in quick little bites, for it is hard to concentrate on texts that natter on and on too long in such a setting. I keep being distracted by the fascinating people I see around me, for my clinic is in a depressed area where the clientele is colorful, aged and distinctive.
My ideal waiting room would have TV sets here and there quietly running tapes of “America’s Favorite Videos.” You know . . . the show where kids ride bicycles off the garage roof, where leashed dogs drag little girls face-first into the mud, where a wedding dance is sure to end in a wipeout fall that destroys the wedding cake and everybody’s dignity. If you are sitting in a waiting room with some painful affliction, what is more fun than seeing a bossy father serving up a pitch to his kid who then drives the ball right into papa’s family jewels? I am embarrassed and full of self-loathing when I watch that show at home, but in a doctor’s office it would be just fine. Nothing distracts us from our pain so well as seeing others in greater (and sillier) pain. Okay, this kid who is wearing his baseball cap backwards is gonna try to ride his skateboard down this two-story long stairway banister. I wonder how that’s gonna turn out?
But we’d need some reading material in case an intellectual like Clyde sat long in the waiting room. I’d sprinkle around some books filled with “5-minute mysteries,” little brain teaser type stories with a curious crime to be solved. And then I’d have every Calvin and Hobbes book ever published, every Pogo book and every compilation of Far Side cartoons. I’d have so many of those books that a loving spouse could chuckle all the way through a heart transplant.
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Mom, he took all the good ones!
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That’s a good list, Steve. Any waiting room with every Calvin and Hobbes book would be pretty entertaining. I’m pretty sure that the times I’ve been sitting a long time in a waiting room – such as the time I took my daughter with pink eye to “quick check” in our clinic and they forgot to put her chart where the nurse gets it and then calls her name, so we waited for 1 1/2 hours – would have been more enjoyable if I could have filled my time reading Calvin and Hobbes.
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I wish waiting rooms would be more like restaurants who cater to little kids… as soon as I walk in the door, hand me a box of crayons and a page or two to color. Maybe provide crossword or sodoku puzzles to the more mature ones in the room. I’m not one to flip through magazines all about topics that are of no interest to me… I much prefer to sit quietly & enjoy a little quiet time with my thoughts.
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sudoku*
(posting speed was faster than my late editing speed on that one)
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Me too, firefly! I always color the kids’ placemats in restaurants. 🙂 And I’m never without my knitting. Or my book. Or a snack. I entertain myself and that way I’m never disappointed. Music is nice, but subjective, isn’t it? Jean Pierre Rampal or James Galway playing Japanese tunes would be lovely and peaceful for a waiting room.
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jacques got my kind of waiting room. i dont spend a lot of time in waiting rooms but when i do the smithsonian, national geographic costra noda, southern living arizona highways are my cup of tea, i do like oprah, simple living, martha stewart, food and wine, new yorker, mother jones, organic gardening, yoga, vegertarian cooking magazine and the list goes on, i do not appreciate people, usa today weekly, us business review, but motorcycle magazinee, etc are a kick, my office manager recently ordered form his sons school for 10$ a year, surfing, snowmobiling and reptile magazines, they have fun in areas outside of their norm. the new york times and the local papers for interest are good and the onion and tc reader are regulars rags of interest. i tend to zip around on google these days checking facebook and email to stay caught up as well as starting up new stuff to check back on later. waiting rooms are a great place to experience what someone else is interesting that would never occur to you. fish tanks are a favorite waiting room prop. they are clean versions of happy well acclimated fish who keep their dysfunction secret until after the waiting room lights go out after the janitor leaves at night. if closing the toy area and the magazine rack stop the germs then i say we should be provided sanipods to sit in with stainless steel stools and piped in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vkaVksYxMs&feature=related
begin the healing befor you see the doctor or let my kids play while you make them wait 45 minutes for their 15 minute appointment with the doctor.
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I would definitely have a stack of Calvin ahd Hobbes… and “digests” with condensed articles might be good – to cover the whole spectrum you could have Readers Digest and the Utne Reader both…
Or how about (esp. in the more upscale clinics) just providing everyone with a Kindle or an iPad? And for the germ-a-phobic they could be wiped off between uses with some sterile stuff. (The germ-a-phobic thing really does drive me nuts, don’t get me started.) On the TV, how about a replay of CBS Sunday Morning in a loop that just plays over and over – you’re not usually there longer than an hour and a half… (are you Clyde?)
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Good choices, BiR! If I had a clinic in a really upscale area or some part of town where most clients are over-educated Democrats, I’d fill the waiting room with People magazines disguised with Utne Reader covers. All my Democratic friends love gossip magazines but are too proud to be seen reading them in public!
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i hate the news but love the clevage
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“People”, “womens'” magazines and the like are my guilty pleasures, I’ll admit. Only for waiting rooms or purchased to read on airplanes (when I’ve forgoten to bring a book). Remember when they had a selection of magazines to read on planes in their heavy plastic covers?
if I’m not in a hurry, sometimes I’ll come out from the examining room AFTER an appointment and sit down to finish an article I started while waiting. Then I might be asked by the receptionist if I’ve been helped.
Too many good ideas posted here to add more… I’d be even MORE inclined to stay a while after my appointment if I had Calvin & Hobbes, New Yorkers or America’s Funniest Videos to tempt me to stay.
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Clyde, that is a great blog piece. The drawing must be one you did which shows you sitting in a waiting room, right? I think your comment about not getting invited to the wild parties that we were all suposed to have attended in the 60s and 70s is extremely funny.
I want one of the doctor’s waiting rooms from days in the past when there were family doctors that ran their own practices and had a person who probably knew you and your family very well who sat at the desk in the waiting room and might share some gossip with you or ask about your family and how they were doing.
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Good for you, Jim, to pick up on that great Clyde cartoon!
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thanks jim i would have missed it.
keeping ???? is the key to good health.
help me out a little clyde
hypocondriac news: love it
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Just back from a fun bike ride and I do not have to sit in a waiting room today, and yes, Barbara, I can be there for more than two hours.
If you don’t know, if you double click the image, you can see it in a bigger format.
jim, it says keeping Calm. I saw a magazine just about like that: it listed terrible diseases and then said the key to health was peace and tranquility. Drawing the cartoon I reverted to an old habit of burying jokes you had to work to figure out. My students were used to it. Should not have done that here.
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There is an ad I keep hearing for a medical facility that claims “Hope is the best medicine of all” or something to that effect. Always makes me think, Well, I’m not going to ever go there with an illness. What do they do – stand around and say, “Gee, I sure hope you get better”?
Like the hat. 🙂
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When I first looked at it, I thought it said “Keeping CATS is the key to good health.” I liked that.
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What is “Unguera Angius”? A search comes up with nothing; my 45 year old Latin and my cleverness scope aren’t helping
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I like that the tome in his lap is Pickwick Papers.
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The mental health clinic in which I work has 6 floors, each with a waiting room. I don’t know where the magazines come from, or who distributes them. We take what we get. We used to have a secretary on our floor who couldn’t stand it if the magazines weren’t in perfect piles, and was perpetually straightening them. She also couldn’t stand having children in the waiting room and complained all the time about the noise they made and the mess they made with the children’s books, coloring books and large tub of blocks leggos that I provided to keep them busy. She has, mercifully, retired. I bring New Yorker magazines from home as well as my daughter’s old copies of British and US Vogue. The other day I saw and issue of Endocrinology Today sitting out there. I have no idea where THAT came from.
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will Word Press let me post?
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Ha, at last, I am back on the Trail!
Our doctors’ office is still independent, and we don’t go there very often. When we do, our stay is blissfully short, and I always have my knitting, so I am not sure what they even have-parenting magazines and Time or Newsweek, IIRC.
When I was there more often with a small child, the thing I remember most was the fish tank. I give those fish a lot of credit for our visits to the doctor being relatively trauma free. Come to think of it, a lot of places we end up waiting in have fish tanks-we like them, but given our maintenance record on most things and the enthusiasm Our Fair Twixie would probably have for the project, we won’t be getting one at our house any time soon.
The vet, on the other hand, is a cats only place that has great cat books and magazines. They don’t try to sell us stuff either.
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Glad you made it back, mig!
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I like to see fish tanks in waiting rooms and other public places. I had fish tanks when I was a kid so I know a little about managing them. Unfortunately some of the tanks kept in public areas aren’t well managed and the fish are not in good shape. I don’t like seeing that.I like to see fish tanks in waiting rooms and other public places. I had fish tanks when I was a kid so I know a little about managing them. Unfortunately some of the tanks kept in public areas aren’t well managed and the fish are not in good shape. I don’t like seeing that.
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My pediatrician had a fish tank, which I loved–it was something to distract me from the awful painting of the sad clown on one wall (yes, it was the Seventies, why do you ask?). Today when I see a fish tank I wince, because I just know kids are going to pound on the glass and possibly hurt the fish. One doctors’ office I used to go to very sensibly had the tanks inside windowed cabinets, so the kids could pound away on the outer glass and the fish were unharmed.
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need to get the fish use to their lives and environment . some love the attention. coi in particular love to interact and they are the most forgiving fish on the planet. get some butterfly coi and try to find something they dont like. they are like little dogs in the tank. they play nice, love to see you if you have enough time you can train them like the old men in central park to come and eat out of your hand and let them enjoy being petted. butterfly coi stop at about 9-12 inches so they dont turn into colorful carp that need a bathtub to live in. chiclids are schitzo fish who are fun to watch but dont like being messed with. angels are like watching hippies on quadludes. salt water gives you color and people have told me they are difficult i have not found this to be true. the fish are a piece of cake the coral is another story but coral tanks are rewarding if you are to do it. they are very cool.
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We have a large fish tank in our display room that is filled with native fish from MN. Today it contains large crappies, some bluegills and four huge perch. The water is a little cloudy right now, but one of the guys will add some fish and remove some other fish and adjust the water later today. Tour season starts with the hatchery season and the fish tank is very popular.
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Your hatchery does tours?
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Yes. Field trip!
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Indeed!
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That is a new kind of double post that I some how managed to do when trying to deal with getting cooperation from Word Press and this cranky computer I am using because my regular computer is down.
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You mean that wasn’t just for emphasis? 🙂
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kind of like renees receptionist
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Waiting for my GP, I used to read a magazine to find a drug to ask him about. At first he thought I was serious; then it got to be a joke. I would find some odd one if I could such as a GYN drug. The thing is that he always knew all about the drug. How do they keep track? Then one day the mags were not there. He told me they had a new NP who insisted they take out the magazines and the play area. He rolled his eyes.
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Clyde – I love the cartoon you drew. Knew right away it was you (and had to click through to read what little gems you may have hidden in the magazine cover).
Along with the things many have mentioned, I would add a little library of essays and short stories – Bill Bryson, Sarah Vowell, Thurber, maybe a few McSweeney’s, some short fiction (SF and mysteries work well in short form). Stuff that allows you to think some, but doesn’t require a long time commitment.
And for the kids, and the kids-at-heart, maybe a big pile of Legos and Duplos (if we get too many germophobes, these can be easily washed in a dishwasher), a supply of crayons and paper, maybe a stack of word finds…for the slightly more mature kid-at-heart we could supply a stack of crossword puzzles.
And wi-fi. I love that my clinic has wi-fi.
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Very well done and a fun story today, Clyde!
I don’t like waiting rooms. They make me really, really uncomfortable. I’m sorry to say that waiting rooms and Walmart bring out the worst in me. I strongly suspect there is truth to the theory that bacteria is spread between patients in waiting rooms. I think Jacque and Steve must have visited the same waiting room on the same day to earn their eye infections. I hope you both feel better soon, and I hope you’re not in a waiting room somewhere, PJ! And Clyde, I hope you’re riding your bike on this mild morning after the storm instead of sitting in a waiting room somewhere. I know you are often in that situation.
I tend to bring my own reading material if I know I’m going to be waiting. Steve and tim did a good job covering the kinds of reading materials/activities I would add to my own waiting room if I had one. I’d also like to see good recipe magazines – something that would highlight healthy foods from a variety of cultures, including sustainable, local food choices. The other thing I’d add, if they don’t already have it, is wi-fi. Most people are able to entertain themselves if they’re in a wireless environment, and the chance for them to leave bacteria behind on a magazine or something is minimized when they have their own device to handle.
OT: Speaking of foods from other cultures – does anyone have a good recipe for naan and for dal?
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I have been intending to try a recipe for a stovetop naan from a cookbook called Artisan Bread In Five Minutes a Day. You make the dough, put some ghee in a skillet, and cook it in a pan instead of baking. Sounds quite quick and simple, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet…did someone mention procrastination?
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i was going to…
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Morning all. The teenager’s pediatrician has fish and play area on the “Well Child” side. I have to admit, we’ve never been on the “Not Well Child” side…she’s sturdy!
But in each procedure room there is a big chalkboard. Teenager and I play “Hangman” until the nurse or doctor shows up! Excellent way to wait.
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It must be a real bummer for those on the “Not Well” side.
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You all have such good ideas – it is too bad that you’re not in charge of the reading material/entertainment in any waiting rooms where I wait.
The waiting room at the government service center where I go to renew my drivers license, etc. has a large screen playing a video. It’s extremely boring – full of safety messages and so on – and repeats every 10 minutes or so. When I took daughter there for her permit test, we were there for THREE HOURS and I found it difficult to concentrate on my book, so I spent way too much time looking at that video screen until I was ready to scream from boredom. Steve’s idea of funny home videos is way better than that.
I would put these things in a medical waiting room:
Plenty of Calvin and Hobbes and other books that make people laugh
A variety of magazines – gardening, food, nature
Brain teaser books
Legos and Duplos
Short story books
Picture books – books that adults enjoy reading too, with good illustrations and either a calming story (like Runaway Bunny) or humorous (like Officer Buckle and Gloria)
Today’s newspaper
Paper and pens for people to make lists, doodle, sketch, etc.
Short, humorous videos (like Steve’s idea)
That’s all I can think of right now.
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they could have an area where you make licence plates
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Perhaps we should sow reading material in waiting rooms, kind of like guerilla gardening. There are plenty of used books in the world that could be deployed.
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We’d have to come up with guerrilla tactics to pull it off, Linda… masquerade as drug & medical supply reps, disguise ourselves as lost couriers, and maybe even feign illnesses. We may even have to resort to fake book jackets and magazine covers so that our illicit cultivations could fly under the radar.
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With some regularity, I take my last few months of magazines (National Geographic, Smithsonian, Martha Stewart Living, Newsweek, and Cooking Light) to the local Health Partners clinic and leave them in the main waiting area. There never seems to be enough reading material to suit me. I also agree that wi-fi is a must. A small therapy dog or two would be nice too.
OT- I think it a realistic possibility that I’ll be going home on Saturday or Sunday. Walked 61 feet today with a hemi-walker; trying steps tomorrow.
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YES!!
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Good news! Hurray!
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woo hoo!
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WooHoo
BTW, one of the therapists that I work with just got a therapy dog this weekend. Really cute.
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Fabulous news PJ – fingers crossed that you are home this weekend!
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Yaaaaa! You go PJ! Good Luck, Take care!
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now get home and clean that house, hans has made a mess and its up to you to get down on all fours and clean clean clean. 61 feet is nothing now get to work.
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It’s rare for me to be sitting in a waiting room (knocking on wood as I type) but there was a time when I relished being forced to just sit & wait. Years ago, when my kiddos were small, I found myself forgotten (for quite a long time) in a doctor’s exam room. Part of me was thinking I should pop my head out into the hallway and shout “helloooooo… remember me?” But the worn out, do-everything-for-everyone-else Mom in me made the conscious decision to keep still and enjoy some ME time. They were so apologetic when they finally stumbled across me… I assured them there was nothing to be sorry about!
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A few weeks ago I got forgotten in my clinic’s waiting room for 80 minutes. I happened to have a good novel going, and I didn’t suffer. When they discovered me the staff was painfully embarrassed, and I enjoyed that. It is nice when your clinic feels it is in your debt and not the other way around!
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Too bad they don’t knock some money off the bill when they do that…
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You’re lucky that they don’t charge you rent for the time you occupied the waiting room.
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If each waiting room could provide a really fun toddler (just fed and napped, maybe), that can be good entertainment. When Joel was about 18 months, really at his cutest with his shock of white hair and pointy little ears, we were sitting in a clinic waiting room in Muncie, IN. An interesting looking old lady (actually, she was probably about my current age – YIKES!) leaned over and said “What lily pad did youfind him under?” The whole room had a good laugh.
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Funny!
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Another kind of waiting room: BiBH posted some great pix on FB of the girls waiting for delivery day.
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Greetings! I avoid doctors and hospitals at all costs. If I had my way, I would put in books about nutrition, herbs, superfoods, the dangers of many drugs, etc. A book by Dr. Michael Murray, “What the Drug Companies Won’t Tell You and Your Doctor Doesn’t Know: The Alternative Treatments That May Change Your Life–and the Prescriptions That Could Harm You.” That and a comprehensive list of all published pharmaceutical research that is conclusively invalid, fraudulent, badly designed, cherry-picked, omitted or just outright lies – about 30-50% of what’s published in those vaunted medical journals. And I’m not exaggerating – truly. There is a time and place to use prescription meds — I find it concerning that it’s the first and only recourse in many cases when other simpler and safer protocols could be used. Call me subversive.
But that’s just me. Those are all great ideas. One waiting room that was quite nice when my son with autism was seeing a psychologist had a running video of puppies or kitties playing together. So cute.
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Subversive!
(you did say “call me subversive.”)
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Thanks, Edith. I knew I could count on some smartypants in the bunch to follow up on my statement! 8) And so very quick, too. I sometimes forget how closely folks read this blog. Oh — and information about homeopathy, Chinese medicine and Ayurveda would also be strategically placed in my waiting room.
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That’s not JUST you, Joanne… I feel exactly the same way! I’ve always thought diagnosing a patient should go much the same way as diagnosing an ailing car… start with the simplest possible cause and work out from there (although I wouldn’t want my doctor kicking my tires right off the bat). It used to be that way during a visit to the doc. Nowadays it seems they go right for the worst case scenario and most expensive tests. And heaven forbid they recommend lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, meditation) to cure what ails you… They go right to the prescription pad instead! grrr
(Add my name to the subversive list)
… and I think, instead of puppy & kitty videos, they should have actual puppies & kitties in the waiting room! 🙂
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Wow. I was just trying to have some fun.
I apologize to those I offended.
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Sorry about my rant, Clyde… I am most certainly NOT offended and enjoyed your post and the topic! I have to admit to having issues with western medicine… bad experiences with loved ones in the past. I’ll be the first to admit we need the docs and the pills, just wish we would put more emphasis on proactive health care. No need to apologize… It’s all good! 🙂
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It is fun, Clyde! No one’s offended here. I realize modern medicine has some miraculous drugs and procedures that keep folks alive. I have no quarrel with you or your blog topic — it’s wonderful. Waiting rooms at dentists, car repair, hair salons, massage therapists, chiropractors, Chinese doctors, etc., are all game to be skewered. Modern Western health care is just my pet peeve.
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