What ‘The Bear’ can teach us about hospitality in medicine

The FX/Hulu show “The Bear” transports viewers inside the tense world of restaurants.  In Season 2’s seventh episode, “Forks” (no real spoilers here, I promise), the uncooperative and defensive Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who has mostly worked in a no-frills sandwich shop, is given the opportunity to stage (basically a short unpaid internship) in a fancy restaurant. There, he witnesses how this high dining establishment goes out of its way to make each meal an experience for their diners. “Every day here is the freakin’ Super Bowl,” Richie’s handler, Garrett, explains.  They do background checks on diners, scan their social media feeds, and generally eavesdrop and actively listen to find any hint or clues of what will make these peoples’ day.

In explaining their method, Garrett reflects on his past struggle with alcoholism, saying, “I just like being able to serve other people now. You know? I think that’s why restaurants and hospitals use the same word: ‘hospitality.’”

This scene and especially that last line raised some questions for me as a doctor. Do hospitals and doctors embrace “hospitality”? Doctors’ offices aren’t restaurants, and hospitals aren’t hotels, nor should they be. But should we aspire to send patients home feeling catered to like the fictional restaurant’s patrons? That might not be possible.

Ironically, it does seem that the so-called hospitality industry of restaurants and hotels spends so much more effort on being hospitable​ than hospitals and other medical facilities do. Maybe that’s because hospitality is all the hotel and restaurant folks have to offer, whereas doctors actually make people better.

Still, I think many doctors, whether caught up in the hustle and bustle or simply burned out, forget and underappreciate the power we can wield with simple acts.

We doctors all want to help our patients. Yet too often, when faced with anxious people who test our patience, demanding people that make us angry, or even abusive people that make us wonder if we should even help them, we lose sight of our purpose.

Watching that episode of “The Bear,” however, I realized how much I prize and live for the moments when I see a glint in a patient’s eyes, when their cynicism fades. When they appear to think, “Oh, maybe he actually cares about me.”

I don’t necessarily do background checks or scroll through patient’s social media feeds, but I am always looking for a way to connect. In my medical intakes, I’ll press to learn about patients’ families, pets, and current and past jobs, partly because these can be medically relevant, but also to find shared connections — things we can talk about — and to broadcast how interested I am in them as individuals.

“Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings has written about how knowing a piece of trivia about someone’s background can evoke a sense of a shared special secret. Since I meet patients from Liberia, for instance, I know the capital is Monrovia and about its history. If someone is wearing a T-shirt for a band or is reading a book when I enter the room, you better believe I’ll ask about it and use it to connect.  Whenever I see one patient who always wears a “Rick and Morty” T-shirt, I’ll ask him, “Which universe are we in today?”

But it’s not just about making conversation. Patients come in, even to a specialist like me in dermatology, and you can tell sometimes that the stated problem (e.g., a skin condition) is only the surface; sometimes, they are just hoping someone will take them seriously and actually go to bat for them. They want to know they aren’t just a number. Maybe they are caregivers, have lost people close to them, are lonely, or have had poor health care experiences in the past.

Many people feel dismissed by doctors, and maybe the most impactful thing I can do is not technically my specialty. Even as a dermatologist, perhaps the best thing I can do is to get them a new primary or specialty doctor they need by setting it up for them (not just giving out a name and call center number). Maybe I can give them the confidence to quit smoking, and not come off as shaming them for life choices like too much time in the sun, our specialty’s carcinogenic nemesis. The secret is compassion for even the patients whose mere names make us roll our eyes.

When Richie overheard that a patron wouldn’t have time to try deep dish before leaving Chicago, he was inspired to sneak out, grab a pizza, and have the staff bless it with their elevated touch as a surprise. He created a moment that will live with them and show how special they are.

I certainly can’t live up to that level — nobody can make every day feel like the Super Bowl, especially in a morally injurious system focused on productivity.

But whether or not I succeed, what I do know is that I aim every day to make my patients feel valued with these intentional moments and efforts. Even within the deeply flawed American health care system, it really is as simple as hospitality.

Jules Lipoff is a board-certified dermatologist and a clinical associate professor (adjunct) at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, Temple University.