Just one more.....

“Just One More Minute”

Brian Lynch

I was just in the dental chair. I was reminded of an unfortunate habit of medical professionals and that is to say “Just one more minute,” or one more stick with the needle, or one more stitch. It seems that it almost never works out that way.

Good medical instruction teaches not to do this and I was taught more than once not to say such things. So why do we do it and why is it so irritating and so counterproductive? Of course, these principles are true in any area of life. I was also just on an airline and it always seems that when the pilot gives a time of departure it never happens. This time he said we were to pull back in “one minute.” Something happened with the “tug” and it was twenty minutes later that we left. Better to say nothing.

I work with some ideas that offer a specific explanation for why this habit can be so irritating.

It is a simple idea and that is that we suffer a great deal of pain throughout our life at the moment when our “wants” are not fulfilled. This is a pretty simple idea. “We suffer a great deal of pain throughout our life at the moment that our “wants” are not fulfilled."

So, we want the procedure to end. Someone tells us that it is going to be over in “a minute.” “Don’t worry one more stitch.” Or we are going to make up twenty minutes of lost time. We “project” into the future. Doctor Donald Nathanson put it this way, saying “When desire outruns reality shame ensues.” A “translation” would be that when we “want” something and do not get it we simply feel bad. Make sense? Makes sense to me. Why shame? Well, I hope you think about it and I think maybe you will agree that it is shame that we feel at that moment.

Now why do doctors, nurses, dentists, and many others inflict these tortures on their charges? They do it out of the best intentions. They want to give us hope that “it will all be over soon.” But they themselves are engaging in a version of desire outrunning reality. They want it over with. They want to get done. They also want you to feel good. But by wanting you to feel good they end up doing something to make you feel bad.

There is a first principle in medicine and that is “First do no harm.” The longer you are in medicine the more you understand how easy it is to do harm and how often not doing harm means doing nothing before you do something.

Finally, it would not be accurate to say that it is always as I have portrayed it and that is that everyone always has the best intentions. There are many disturbed people in all walks of life and it is not precluded that such torture as described here is not very much intended by the controlling party at least subconsciously. Why this would be is left for another time.

Copyright 2010