William R. Sonneberg, MD, Family Practice, Titusville, Pennsylvania
Family physician William Sonneberg, MD, has a solo practice with a staff of two. The practice is located in northwestern Pennsylvania, a region that went solidly for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
"I'm mildly in favor of Trump," Dr Sonneberg says. "My office manager is aggressively in favor of Trump. He can't do anything wrong. And my receptionist is sort of for him."
"The discussion around here is usually a variation of who's more pro-Trump," Dr Sonneberg explains. He and his office manager don't see eye to eye on Trump's healthcare policy, but "we leave it alone and kind of shut up about it. That's my situation. But that kind of reflects rural Pennsylvania."
Dr Sonneberg is on staff at the Titusville Area Hospital, where doctors talk politics in the doctors' lounge. "Probably a large percentage of physicians and staff are conservative," he says. "There's one strong pro-Hillary physician. We have a cordial relationship. Here's kind of a funny story. Shortly after Trump won that election, Rich suffered a heart attack. It wasn't too bad; he came back with an angioplasty. I walked into the room and said, 'Boy, I'm glad to see you. But you took that loss way too hard.'"
Dr Sonneberg is clinical assistant professor of family and community medicine at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, 232 miles away, where he serves as a proctor. "The medical school now has a third-year rotation, where one rotation is in an underserved area, and they rotate through my office for a 1-month rotation," he says.
His students differ from him in a couple of key respects.
"Many of them see their future as being employed," Dr Sonneberg observes, "whereas I'm totally independent."
Also, while practicing doctors and patients in rural Pennsylvania tend to be conservative, "the medical students have more of a liberal perspective," Dr Sonneberg notes. "They are highly in favor of single payer," he adds.
Dr Sonneberg is not a proponent of a single-payer healthcare system. But rather than arguing with his young charges and "getting all passionate about it, I have fun with it," he says. "If there's a particular story in the news, they'll josh me. I'll josh them. Trump will tweet something. They'll razz me. I'll razz them. I was on the debate team in college. And you kind of learn, rather than get emotionally involved, to have fun with it and come up with logical arguments."
"Interestingly enough," Dr Sonneberg says, "my office got the highest reviews of any rotation in the program. It's been kind of a fun experience."
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Cite this: Neil Chesanow. Hostility in Your Medical Office: Are Politics to Blame? - Medscape - Jul 12, 2017.
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