Patient Experience Week: Dr. Paul Conrad

Dr. Paul Con­rad is one of our Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) physi­cians here at Quin­cy Med­ical Group. As part of Patient Expe­ri­ence Week, we asked him a cou­ple of ques­tions about what his patient means to him.

Why makes your time with patients spe­cial?
​“I real­ly feel that I lis­ten atten­tive­ly to the patient’s his­to­ry and cur­rent over­all life sta­tus (espe­cial­ly work­ing with a scribe allows me to pro­vide face-to-face con­tact bet­ter) and tai­lor their prob­lem man­age­ment to their needs by pre­sent­ing them options on how to pro­ceed with treat­ment. I also try to make them feel that they are in con­trol of the con­ver­sa­tion by keep­ing com­fort­able eye con­tact, includ­ing every­one in the room in the dis­cus­sion if appro­pri­ate, and telling them what man­age­ment option I would pick per­son­al­ly or if one of my fam­i­ly mem­bers was in the patient’s indi­vid­u­al­ly unique cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Oh yeah – and we keep it as light­heart­ed and fun­ny (if appro­pri­ate) because laugh­ter is still good medicine!”

What does pro­vid­ing a good patient expe­ri­ence mean to you?
​“The whole goal of the patient expe­ri­ence to me is to improve the patient’s over­all health and life by pro­vid­ing them with the tools of med­ica­tion, behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tions, moti­va­tion­al ratio­nale, and/​or poten­tial­ly surgery based on the years of expe­ri­ence I have in my field of study. It also means buy-in of the patient to their health man­age­ment and hope­ful­ly great word of mouth refer­rals to their friends and fam­i­ly members.”