Paul A. Pietro, MD

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 We are sitting with Dr. Wayne Whitted  at the Association of Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgeons to talk a little  bit about what are the patients’ expectations of their gynecologic caretakers.  First off, can you tell us a little bit about your training and enlighten us on  the expectations?
 
 

 Yes, I graduated from Loma Linda University,  trained at Wilford Hall, United States Air Force Medical Center. Did my time  with the military in Germany, where I was the Director and Chief of the ObGyn  Department at the Midland Air Force Base. Since that time, I was in private  practice in San Antonio, Texas, for seven years and I put together the first  menopause clinic in a gynecology-only practice in San Antonio. Because I wanted  to be involved in research, I went on to the University of Miami and developed a  gynecologic curriculum at the University of Miami, based on minimally invasive  surgery and also menopause. After doing a fair amount of research at the  University, I went back out and got into private practice and set up a minimally  invasive surgical gynecologic practice in Miami with Dr. Pietro. 
 
 My experience suggests that what women are really looking for in a gynecology  practice is not only a diverse practice, but a practice that suggests expertise.  What we find in Miami is that women not only want to be taken care of in a  clinical office setting, but they also want their physician to be able to take  them into the operating room and solve their problems. In that, they also want  you to be able to tell them what all of their options generally are in a  particular disease setting. One of our common complaints we see in our practice  when patients come to us is they were not told all of their options, so we feel  it is very, very important to tell patients. 
 
 The other thing I think women are seeking when they are looking at their health  care is timely health care; for instance, in our practice, we have same day  appointments, same week appointments and certainly no longer than one week  before you are seen. They want, again, expertise, so we provide them with our  certifications. It is a transparent practice. They want to be greeted with  kindness and compassion and they want to be taken well care of by the office  staff. They want a clean environment and they want an environment that is  pleasing to the eye. So in our particular case, we have put together a practice  that has soothing, calm colors, we have a practice that is well decorated and it  is very inviting. 
 
 One of the things we did in our practice because we thought our approach is to  look at the mind, body and spirit as a whole is we put together a CD of mixed  healing music which we give to our patients who are under tremendous stress, who  are pre-surgical and heading to the operating room. We want them to listen to  this music; we want them to incorporate it into their daily life so that it then  helps their immune system and prepares their body to heal from either their  stresses or their surgical procedure. This CD has been compiled by us from  researched music that looks at particular chords and how it impacts the body. It  is a very interesting set of research about music.
 
 

 So you are saying that you take a very holistic  approach to the patient not just a clinical, medical approach?
 
 

 Absolutely. When our patients have difficulties in  their lives, we keep track of that and we will call them two or three times a  week to make sure they are getting resolution. Our surgical patients get called  the same day they are discharged from the hospital so that they feel this  personal touch and like they have not been abandoned. One particular thing we  have noticed in women and their health care is they do not want to feel  abandoned or as if you have taken care of the problem and now they are no longer  important. So we continue to try and maintain this importance in our practice  for each individual patient and I think it is very important to make this an  individualistic process.

Articles

From the 34th Annual Meeting - Chicago, Illinois - November 2005

Building A Doctor/Patient Relationship

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Author | Paul A. Pietro, MD

Articles

Building A Doctor/Patient Relationship

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