A relative who was never in the exam room told the whole town my story
This account was submitted by a healthcare provider and de-identified before publication. Details that could identify a patient or practice have been removed, and it is shared with the provider’s consent.
A relative of a patient, by their own admission not a caregiver I ever interacted with, posted a long and emotional public account of a visit they had not attended, misstating what actually happened in the exam room.
I could not correct a secondhand story without discussing a child's protected health information, which I would never do under any circumstances, so a misremembered narrative from someone who was not present became, for a while, the loudest thing said about my care.
In a small state where communities are tight and news travels fast, that Facebook post reached a large share of my patient families within days, and parents I had cared for over years saw it and a few asked me about it with real concern. Pediatrics runs entirely on parents' trust, and watching that trust get tested by an account from someone who was not even there is a helpless feeling.
I reported it as a third party post and it remained up, since the platform does not verify who was or was not in an appointment.