Last month, one of my former patients visited me and discussed with me about her revision surgery.
She underwent zygoma and mandible reduction a year ago but she didn't come to ask her revision of her facial bone contouring.
She was satisfied with her facial bone surgery results but she discussed with me about revision of her facelift.
She planned her facelift 6 months after her facial bone contouring because I advised her to undergo facial bone surgery first and facelift later at the first consultation.
Before visiting my clinic once again for her facelift, she changed her plan and went to another clinic.
What happened to her ?
She changed her plan abruptly because of one bad review in internet.
One reviewer in a forum criticized me that I had a consultation with her for about 10 to 15 minutes during another patient's surgery and the patient was abandoned alone at that time.
Because she was so good in writing and seems to be confident in her recommendation, my patient lost her confidence to me and followed her advice and went to another clinic that was recommended by the reviewer.
Can 10 minutes consultation during another patient's surgery be a problem ?
Unfortunately, her results of facelift was bad and her decision was proved to be bad.
She looked fierce and angry after her facelift and ear lobes were twisted.
She couldn't be taken care with enough after surgery and couldn't get kind answers from the doctor after surgery.Many doctors change their face after surgery.
That's the reason why she came to my clinic for revision.
She grumbled in consultation room.
" I don't know why I changed my mind in a sudden even though I had good results from your previous surgery.
On reflection at that time, I couldn't understand why I misunderstood you.
Now, I understand you and know that the bad review was absurd misunderstanding.
The reviewer even didn't undergo any surgery from you.
Because she(bad reviewer) seems to be so assured and her writing was so good, I blew up my precious time and face.
Now, I can fully understand that doctor can have a consultation for a short time during his surgery and that was just nothing."
Is other person's bad review more powerful than the results from the previous surgery ?
I usually don't read any reviews about me because I think it doesn't worth it.
But I searched and read the bad review after consulting with her,
One Australian girl seems to have misunderstood me and fabricated some facts.
But I couldn't help admitting that her writing was so fluent and persuasive.
I remember her and was shocked by her fiendish twisting of facts.
Because English is my second language and writing is not my specialty, I can't and don't want to contradict her conjecture one by one.
But I don't want many people misunderstand me and will explain about concentrating, resting, and waiting in surgeon's work.
In any surgery, concentrating to the surgery is very important to the surgeon.
Because surgery is like tightrope walking, loosing concentration in one second can make a disaster.
But it doesn't mean that the surgeon can't take a rest during the procedure or the surgeon should do their work constantly.
Concentrating to the whole procedures for several hours everyday is impossible.
So, effective and clever disposition of time is needed instead.
For example, I wait for about 10 minutes after injection of local anesthetics because the hemostatic(stop bleeding and minimize blood loss) ability of local anesthetics reaches its peak after 10 minutes.
In operating room, waiting for 10 minutes without doing anything is more difficult than doing their job constantly for an hour because the former looks silly and looks like he is wasting time.
As you know, time is money to plastic surgeons in private clinics.
Many of my colleagues can't wait for 10 minutes after local injection and start the surgery in bloody fields, which can make inaccurate, more difficult, more time consuming procedure and bad results of course.
I also had a difficulty in waiting for 10 minutes in my apprentice years.
To make it easier, I take off my gloves, which stops my impatient drive to jump into the surgery and get it done fast.
During this break, I do squat exercise or push up or listen to music or chat with nurses or anesthesiologist in the operating room.
I sometimes walk out of operating room and have a consultation with another patient or do follow up treatments of my patients.
I also take a break during patient's position change and when each procedure is ended in multiple procedures.
When there is bleeding, I ask my nurse to compress the wound until the bleeding stops and take off my gloves and take a rest.
When there is unexpected situation, I stop doing my surgery and think carefully how to figure out the solution.
This kind of intermittent break help me concentrate in every seconds in real surgery and to be lively and creative in whole procedure.
I know that this kind of break might look weird to some people.
But I believe this is better to both patients and doctors.
What you see is not what you get.
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Every surgeon is not perfect and so do I.
I also can make a mistake and can hurt other people(especially my patients) in unintended ways.
I'm so sorry for that.
I reflect on myself and try to be a better person everyday.
I always pay attention to constructive criticism and accept it as part of my learning.
But I respond to absurd misunderstanding because I don't want my patients get hurt because of that.
I believe I have been sincere to all my patients and treated them like my family in all my career.
Truth will come out eventually.
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