Reviews and Choosing a Surgeon

Social media and message boards give each of us an unlimited opportunity to praise or criticize the people, products and services with which we interact. Unfortunately, this freedom and anonymity brings out the worst in some people. The ability to freely attack one’s business competitors is an overwhelming temptation for some. For others, any imagined slight or disrespect is enough to trigger a multi-pronged libelous vendetta.
As you browse through reviews, how do you know what to believe? A skeptical approach to any overly-passionate review is probably wise. People generally don’t get too excited in reviewing a coffee maker, and thus the reviews are likely to be pretty reliable. But when the topic is emotionally charged, like your result from cosmetic surgery, there is a tendency to become polarized in your thinking, and lots of ‘best ever/worst ever’ reviews are posted. These reviews (positive and negative) do not give a reliable picture of the results of a practice. Unfortunately, patients with good results that met their expectations don’t generally post reviews!
A negative review written by a patient who was declined surgery may say more about the patient than the surgeon. Patients occasionally present to the office with a problem that can’t be improved, they may have unrealistic demands, and there are patients who will clearly not be happy no matter what is accomplished through surgery. Declining to offer surgery is sometimes the best we can do for a patient.
Sometimes, a result from surgery is perceived as less than ideal. This isn’t necessarily the work of a ‘bad surgeon’, and it might just as well represent a case of unrealistic expectations. A good surgeon acknowledges the possibility of touch-up surgery at the original consultation. A good surgeon also recognizes when an outcome is 95% perfect, and when further surgery is likely to make the situation worse rather than better.
So what can you learn from negative reviews when they may represent a legitimate complaint, a nasty attack by a competitor, or an irrational response to a great result? You can learn what might be problem areas in a practice, and what type of questions to ask at your consultation with a cosmetic surgeon. If you read a review in RateMD or Google Reviews that a surgeon ‘has nasty staff and is unavailable after surgery’, make a point of sizing up the staff, and bring up your concerns about availability at your consultation. If you read that a surgeon doesn’t do surgery under OHIP, ask if this is true before you book your consultation. If there is a particular review that is bugging you, ask the surgeon to address the comments in the review and then decide if it is still a legitimate concern for you. Just because you read something doesn’t make it true, but it might be a clue to a problem that you should explore before making your final decision.