I’ve been thinking about reviews recently.
And if I’m completely truthful, probably thinking about them rather more than I should.
I’ve always been someone who leaves a good review when I’ve had a good experience. If someone has been particularly helpful, a restaurant has been lovely or a small business has gone out of its way for me, I make a point of saying so.
Equally, if something goes wrong, my first instinct isn’t to go online and tell the world about it. I would much rather speak to the person concerned and give them the opportunity to put it right. Of course there are times when something genuinely deserves a poor review, but I’ve never particularly liked the idea of publicly tarnishing somebody’s reputation over something that could have been resolved with a conversation.
Perhaps that’s why I find reviews rather difficult now that I’m on the other side of them.
I know my patients are happy.
I can see it in the warmth when I meet them in reception. I feel it when I visit somebody in their home. People thank me, come back to see me and recommend their family and friends.
Sometimes they bring me chocolates. One patient even brought me a doughnut from the bakery opposite.
These little gestures mean a lot to me. Not because I need presents — although I’m unlikely to turn down a doughnut — but because there is something very human about them. They tell me that the relationship I feel with my patients is felt on the other side too.
And yet I still find myself looking at our Google reviews and wondering why the number hasn’t seemed to move much from week to week.
Rationally, I know nobody owes us a review. But if I’m being truthful, there’s a tiny part of me that feels almost slighted when one doesn’t appear — and ridiculously excited when one does.
Not because I think, “I spent all that time with you, so you should give me five stars.”
That really isn’t it.
I haven’t become this sort of doctor because I’m now in private practice. I was exactly the same in the NHS.
I have always given people time. I’ve worried about patients after they’ve left my room, looked something up later because I was still thinking about them, or done a little more simply because it felt like the right thing to do.
That’s just me.
There has always been a warmth in my relationship with patients that is difficult to describe. Medicine, for me, has never been a series of transactions. Someone comes into the room with a problem and, for that period of time, they have my attention. I want to understand what is worrying them, not simply deal with the first thing on the list and move on.
Private practice has given me more time to practise medicine in that way, but it hasn’t made me that way.
Perhaps that’s why reviews feel more personal than I expected them to.
Building Trinity has probably added another dimension. It isn’t a large organisation where feedback disappears into a marketing department somewhere. It is something we have built ourselves and care enormously about getting right.
And I’ve realised that, for a small business, a Google review is far more than another star or another number on a screen. It helps build trust. It helps somebody who has never heard of you decide whether to give you a chance. In a very real way, it helps build the business.
And it takes perhaps two minutes.
So if there is one thing I would say to anyone reading this, it is this: if somebody has looked after you well, wherever that happens to be, tell them.
If you’ve had a lovely meal, received great service, found a brilliant tradesperson, or simply encountered somebody who went that little bit further for you, tell them. And if it’s a small business, consider telling other people too.
Leave the review.
We are often very quick to speak when something goes wrong, but perhaps not quite as quick when somebody gets it right.
Those two minutes of your time may have an impact far greater than you realise.
You may help a small business grow. You may help the next person decide to walk through its door.
And, just as importantly, you may make somebody sitting on the other side of that review ridiculously happy.
Because you never really know how much a few kind words might mean to the person reading them.
After more than thirty years in medicine, apparently they still mean rather a lot to me.
Although, to be fair, so did the doughnut.
If you enjoyed this reflection, you might also like:
The Journey That Led Me Here — a little about how more than thirty years in medicine, and some unexpected turns along the way, brought me to where I am now.
Healthy Ageing – What Thirty Years as a Doctor Taught Me — some of the things I’ve learnt about staying well as we get older.
Or browse the rest of Notes from a GP — my reflections on medicine, life and what happens both inside and outside the consulting room.
Notes from a GP 