Speaker announcement: The rule of three naked people

Dr. Pamela Wible (rhymes with Bible) played doc­tor from when she was 5 years old.

Her father was a pathol­o­gist and her moth­er a psy­chi­a­trist. There were babysit­ters, of course, but Pamela was one bossy kid. They could­n’t han­dle her.

So she end­ed up going to work with her par­ents, some­times hang­ing out with corpses in the morgue like it was no big thing.

Pame­la’s par­ents advised her not to go into med­i­cine. But she had a dream of being a small town fam­i­ly doc­tor, mak­ing house calls.

At one time, Pame­la’s dream was the norm. But not today. When Pamela start­ed prac­tic­ing med­i­cine, she found her­self rush­ing patients through in 10–15 min­utes, not form­ing a rela­tion­ship with patients and not ful­ly address­ing their prob­lems or answer­ing their ques­tions.

It was not the type of med­i­cine Pamela had in mind.

She tried all sorts of dif­fer­ent work­ing arrange­ments — small clin­ics, part-time, full-time, hos­pi­tal-owned clin­ics — and noth­ing worked.

It was a num­bers game. See more patients. Pro­duce more. Bring in more rev­enue.

“The doc­tors weren’t hap­py and the patients weren’t hap­py,” Pamela says.

Pamela nev­er grew out of her bossi­ness and inde­pen­dence. She knew that heal­ing was still her call­ing. So instead of being beat­en down by the sys­tem, she cre­at­ed a new one.

Well, it’s not entire­ly new. She’s going back to the patients, ask­ing them what their ide­al clin­ic would look like. The result looks very much like the small town vil­lage doc­tor that seems to have dis­ap­peared.

Pame­la’s med­ical prac­tice shows today that health care does not have to be frus­trat­ing and con­fus­ing and scary. Going to the doc­tor can be a joy­ful expe­ri­ence — one that heals you phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. One that does­n’t have to break the bank.

Today, Pamela helps doc­tors all over the coun­try revive their pas­sion of health care by cut­ting out the lay­ers that have mys­ti­fied it for so long. And at TEDxSalem, Pamela will share some of her secrets to run­ning the ide­al med­ical prac­tice.

Oh, and what is the three naked peo­ple rule?

You should nev­er have that many wait­ing for you at the same time.

Bio

Name: Dr. Pamela Wible

Occu­pa­tion: Fam­i­ly doc­tor

Wrote: Pet Goats & Pap Smears 

Born in: Philadel­phia

Raised in: Lucas, Texas

Lives in: Eugene

School: Welles­ley Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Med­ical Branch in Galve­ston, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona (res­i­den­cy)

Words of wis­dom: “It’s just not right to have three naked peo­ple wait­ing at the same time.”

– Saerom Yoo, TEDxSalem sto­ry­teller