Reviews are one of the most valuable tools on the internet. They help us figure out what hotels are the best, what movies and shows we should watch, where we should eat a meal, and what hospitals are suitable for healthcare. The thing with reviews is that while they can help, they can also be significant hindrances. A negative review can cause a lot of issues. In St. Denis Medical Season 1 Episode 10, “People Just Say Stuff Online,” Ron and Alex learned a hard lesson on just how much a bad review can affect you.
More: Where is St. Denis Medical set? Read more.
There’s Everything Reviews On Everywhere
After Ron instructed a patient who came in complaining of knee pain that he needed to lose some weight to relieve the pain further, Joyce informed him. This led to the patient writing a review on Yelp (while he was still in the Emergency Room), claiming that he was fat-shamed. Ron doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned by the review because he did not fat shame the patient; he did his job.
Secondly, reviews don’t mean much to him because he’s not doing the work for reviews. Joyce feels differently. Because of the negative review, the hospital has dropped from five stars to three and a half. A low star rating can drastically affect not just the amount of patients that come in but also the funding. And with St. Denis Medical already being a hospital that doesn’t have a lot of money, every positive review equals more money. Because of this, Joyce needs Ron to fix the situation immediately.
Like Joyce, Ron has been practicing medicine for a long time, so he’s not used to this new era of everything having reviews. It’s a point of contention because Ron was not wrong and tries to teach Joyce what happens when you prioritize reviews over actual patient care. Joyce wants him to apologize, which he does (sort of). Joyce takes things a step further by micromanaging Ron as she observes him with his patients so that she can see how he handles them. He was not happy about it because he is a good doctor and didn’t need someone to monitor him. Joyce didn’t improve the situation, and his annoyance came out, and in some ways, it affected how he approached his patients. While I sometimes disagreed with his abrasiveness, I understood where he was coming from.
As Ron pointed out, a healthcare worker’s job is to provide patient care. Somewhere along the way, healthcare became more business-centered and lost the aspect of patient care. I’ve been in the healthcare industry for twenty years and have seen how it has changed. Some changes have been good, and others have not been so good. I have felt the shift and the frustration of reviews being the thing that controls the narrative for healthcare professionals. Administrators seem to prioritize reviews above the actual care provided, which was bothersome to Ron. His job means a lot to him, and he wants to care for his patients the best he can without all the outside noise getting in the way. I think Joyce finally got where Ron came from once they faced a patient emergency.
Ron eventually cools off. He takes a step back and recognizes that maybe sometimes he does come off as a little insensitive, and he makes it a point to work on himself. Ron has seen it all and done it all, and over the years, he has lost some of his empathy. His conversation with Joyce reminded him to show more kindness and understanding because their patients are going through a lot, and they want to know that someone will guide them in the right direction and do it in a way that won’t make them feel like they’ve done something wrong.
Nice Alex
In St. Denis Medical Season 1, Episode 10, “People Just Say Stuff Online,” unlike Ron, Alex cares about the reviews written about her. Initially, she claimed that she wasn’t concerned about them. That is until Serena, dubbed in one review as the “ER Beyonce,” comes across a review that calls her “snippy.” Serena attempts to calm Alex down, but Alex, being Alex, can’t let it go, so she goes around the hospital looking for another nurse named Alex. Alex can’t believe anyone would say a bad word about her, but she learns that even if she thinks she’s great, someone out there disagrees.
Nursing is challenging work, so I get Alex losing it over that one negative review. Most people would think that’s weird, but think about it. Everyone in every industry is affected by negative reviews. No matter how many good ones you receive, all it takes is one to mess up your head. And Alex getting a negative review went to her head. It didn’t get any better when she learned that the other nurse, Alex, is known as “Nice Alex.”
After she had a big public blow-up in front of patients, she learned a valuable lesson in not letting one lousy review get her down. Hard as it is to do that, it’s something that you have to do. You’ll see patients daily, so there is no time to focus on a negative review. What mattered was that Alex knew that she provided the appropriate care. Just like good reviews will come, bad ones will, too. Everyone isn’t going to like you, and that’s okay.
Other Thoughts
- “I’m here to heal bodies, not feelings.”
- “Sorry your feelings were hurt by my neutral statement of fact.”
- “Sorry, I want you to live.” Yes, it can feel like this sometimes when talking to stubborn patients.
- Bruce reliving his bully trauma with Danny Fitzgerald explains so much about how he became the way he is.
- Good job, Matt. You should have been uncomfortable making that call to Danny on behalf of Bruce. There’s this little thing called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, AKA HIPAA. If Joyce had found out what they had done, he and Bruce could have gotten into a lot of trouble.
- “Our patients are people on what could be their worst day, but so are we. People need to acknowledge that we have hard days, too. We mess up. Sometimes we need to do better. Sometimes, we need to acknowledge that we’re doing the best we can, and that’s all we can do.”
- “We don’t just provide care. We care.”
St. Denis Medical airs Tuesday Nights at 8/7c on NBC.
