I recently changed my pain clinic, and it was long overdue. The reason I waited so long was because I genuinely liked the doctor at the old clinic. That’s a very different thing from saying that he was particularly good at what she did, or that he addressed my pain in anything even close to a helpful way. It’s a reminder to me that we need to hold our doctors accountable in the same way we hold other professionals accountable for their performance. You wouldn’t continue to patronize the same auto mechanic if he never succeeded in fixing your car, no matter how nice he was. You wouldn’t keep calling a plumber who couldn’t manage to unclog your drain, or call a taxi company that never managed to find your destination. Ultimately, we need to hold medical professionals to the same standard we would anyone else we hired to do a job for us. If they can’t get it done right, we need to fire them, and there’s nobody who can do that but us.