Ask Not What Your Surgeon Says, Ask What He Drives
by Ruth Folger Weiss
Few appreciate the impact of marketing on their lives, relegating it to lightweights and thinking of it as “Madison Avenue for the gullible.” But when marketing, science, and your health are in the crosshairs, it is indeed illuminating, and in my position as an advertising champion, somewhat gratifying.Pat Farnack, in her Your Health series on WCBS Radio, has been running a feature on how to choose a surgeon, and her latest, “Your Surgeon’s Car” tickled my fancy. After suggesting that one diligently sweat the details prior selecting a surgeon, i.e by Googling a prime candidate’s name, interviewing each candidate, and specifically asking how many of these surgeries he has personally been involved in as well as what his/her success rate is in the specific surgery you are considering, she quotes Peter Moore of men’s health magazine and states that one should go to the doctor’s parking lot to check out his car.”Your surgeon’s car is a window to his soul” and his success, she says. “If your doctor’s car is a wreck inside, if there’s a dent in the bumper, you have to think twice.”Your surgeon’s car should be far superior to those of the nurses and staff pulling in and out of the lot, and in a condition comparable to the one you want to be in post-op!This flies in the face of the more conservative values we were raised on: a car is a vehicle of transportation and not social aspiration.Guess, this marketing person intuited the intrinsic merits of some of what we do professionally…
