It can take time and patience to gain the trust of a patient. It’s important to remember that you may not know what a patient is going through in their personal life. Dr. Bruce McClendon I first encountered a patient about 1-2 months ago that was very upset. The main reason for his disgust was because he felt that he wasn’t notified that the Podiatrist that was treating him in our group is currently not available at this time, and will be gone for a few years due to other obligations. My staff was very cordial and explained to the patient that they are sorry but we did send out a notice to all our patients to notify them of the change. They reinforced to the patient that I was very competent and that he can still be seen today if he wants. Well, I did see the patient but I can tell that he wasn’t quite pleased because he wanted the doctor that he has always been seeing. I made sure I keep a friendly voice and tried to reassure the patient that he will still get the same quality of care that my associate has given him. Well at check out time he still wasn’t quite pleased and stated that he didn’t want to see me again. To my surprise this patient was on my schedule again recently last week but this time he was much more friendly and actually apologized to me for his behavior. I told him don’t worry about it and I just want to make sure that he gets taken care of. During his visit we actually started to discuss personal things about ourselves. I was always taught treat others the way you would want to be treated. Also you never know what your patients are going through personally so it is in the patient’s and your best interest to not make the situation any worst. Shower them with kindness and they will come around. You don’t want to fight fire with fire because I never heard of someone calling the fire department and expecting them to put out their burning house with more fire. I got into medicine because I like my patient’s to walk out the door feeling like they saw a very good doctor. And I want my patients to know that I don’t see them as a dollar sign but as a human being that needs help with their foot and ankle problem.