Consciousness Raising Exercise #30

Dr. W may be a brilliant surgeon, but his lack of organizationis reflected in his sloppy dictation habits. He is chronically behind in his dictation and can never find anything in his office. Most of Dr. W's run-on sentences fill 10 lines of text and are so convoluted that he keeps contradicting himself. As a result, the doctor's support staff wastes half its time making corrections and tracking down lost documents.

In recent years, two secretaries have attempted to straighten out Dr. W's office and get him organized. Each secretary gave up in disgustand quit.

The agency which handles dictation for the Great Bowels o'Fire Medical Clinic where Dr. W works has a digital dictation system that accommodates input from 100 doctors. As soon as Dr. W finishes dictating, his work is made available to a team of top-quality medical transcriptionists working from remote locations.

Although Great Bowels o'Fire Medical Clinic handles a large number of patients from multiple ethnic backgrounds, when dictating reports Dr. W never bothers to spell the name of the patient. Nor does he make any attempt to spell the name of the referring physician to whom he is dictating his follow-up letter.

To make matters worse, Dr. W rarely remembers to give the patient's demographic information to the transcriptionist at the beginning of his dictation. Nor does he believe in furnishing the transcriptionist with a full address for the person who should receive his dictation.

Instead, he will frequently say things like "This letter goes to Dr. Smith in Pennsylvania." Sometimes the transcriptionist may not learn the patient's name until well into the third paragraph ofa letter dictated by Dr. W.

Dr. W recently complained that he had found numerous spelling errors in the names of his patients. When asked to be more specific, he refused to give any tangible evidence of mistakes. Instead, he threw his arms up in the air and demanded to know if his reports were being transcribed by "novices" or "amateurs."

In 50 words or less, explain what is wrong with this picture.