Teachers and Doctors

I went to see an orthopedist today. I was checked in 3 times (lobby, front desk of the center, doctor’s receptionist), filled out all my forms, and had all of my information taken by various employees. The nurse asked me some questions, took some notes, and helped me get prepared for the doctor. The doctor then came in, asked me how my knee was feeling, and gave me an injection. He couldn’t have been in the room for more than 4 minutes, but managed in that time to smoothly drop in to do the most important piece of my 30 minute visit.

Somehow in medicine we’ve figured out how to maximize a doctor’s time. The doctor isn’t a receptionist, office manager, documenter, interviewer, or data manager. He doesn’t sign into the computer. The entire operation is optimized to leave the most difficult/advanced work to the doctor, and to give everything else to other employees.

Yes, the doctor’s time is extremely expensive. I don’t even want to know how much the insurance company now has to pay him for my shot. Because the doctor’s time is so expensive, he can’t be asked to spend more than 4 minutes with me throughout this visit. But it also works the other way around - because we’ve managed to create a system where he can perform 15 medical procedures in an hour instead of one or two, the doctor can make a lot more money.

What if we treated teachers’ time a bit more like doctors’ time?