This isn't likely to be a what a phone appointment is.
A phone appointment is what it sounds like. A set time, generally within normal office hours, pre-arranged, for the doctor and patient to speak.
It's simply a way of not taxing the patient with travel, especially if they need to travel any significant distance like to the next town.
I've noticed the same problem and I'm not in the medical profession. Many people don't have good judgement when given direct 24/7 phone access.
It's pretty obvious why you'd want this space. Constant on-call status is rough enough for technical roles, I can't imagine how much higher the burden would be when people's health is at stake and 'false alarms' are human fears instead of automated notices. Long hours and high emotional burdens scream for boundaries. But... I've also seen doctors who seem to consider this standard practice. Not that they're obliged to respond immediately, but they even offer phone numbers unprompted. (I hope for their sake they have a different number for those calls.)
What stands out to me is that this article is about Crohn's, a probably lifelong condition for which a doctor might see a huge number of patients. The doctors I've seen giving out personal phone numbers are oncologists and similar, who see people for long but finite stretches and have relatively low patient counts. (And, of course, are dealing with a disease where "is this serious?" is not-uncommonly met with "go to the ER immediately".)
I'm not sure what your specialty is, but I'd be really interested to know whether this is just a per-doctor preference or has broad patterns between fields.
What a terrible system we've got.
Do people get into medicine for the same reason? Do they go home and continue practising medicine?
There's no medical reason for a doctor to be on-call 24/7/365, and it's stupid to expect them to. If an urgent medical issue comes up at 2 AM, the patient can go to the ER, which is what the doctor would tell them to do anyway.
My aunt had a condition that causes fluid build up in her brain. She has a slightly unusual shunt arrangement, and over Christmas (we now know) it got blocked up. She started developing neurological symptoms, and the only person who knew enough about her treatment to be able to sort it out was her doctor.
The actually had his home landline number, but he was away, and it was only due to luck of a call coinciding with the neighbour feeding the cat that they were able to get the number of where he was for Christmas. By that point, my aunt with unconscious in hospital, and might well have died if treatment had been delayed any more.
It's scary that sheer happenstance saved your aunt's life. I wonder how medical record keeping could be improved to help with that scenario.
In this case I think it was less knowledge of the particular case, and more the expertise in that specialised situation. Skillset rather than records.
There are a few special patients he'll give his cell number to. Pregnant moms especially I think. He's a country doc and the only good baby doctor within a hundred miles, so if there's an OB patient who he thinks is higher risk, and who he knows won't abuse his cell number, he'll give it to them no problem.
I'm sure that experienced doctors can spot people who are going to ruin every weekend a mile away, and also those responsible enough to call only when it really is appropriate.
Is this sideways dig really necessary? I could say the same about programmers (and I am one).
I count half a dozen doctors and nurses among my inlaws. None of them will give their personal phone numbers out to patients. If a patient asks, they're politely told to call the office, who will then curate the calls.
If you've ever been around a doctor, especially a GP, you know how many calls they get. My father-in-law takes dozens of calls a day from his office, several of which come at night when he's asleep. If he were expected to take calls directly from patients, he'd be completely unable to do his job.
So, serious question for you jachee: is it possible that the doctor you're responding to has some insight into the challenges of his job that you don't?
My brother-in-law is an ER doc. He treats an alarmingly high number of patients who threaten to sue him if he's not willing to give them his phone number, write an immediate referral, or prescribe opioids. These are patients with real pain, real problems, who are understandably desperate for relief, and who are easily capable of completely dominating a doctor's time and attention.
The implication of an obvious disdain for humanity here is pretty uncharitable. Just as it's difficult to relate to chronic disease from the outside, I think it's difficult to relate to the challenges of treating and caring for the afflicted.
I think you are wrong to make that assumption.
There are tons of people with no sense of boundaries who will make contact over and over for very little reason. It only takes one or two of those people to ruin it for the rest of us.
That's worded with a tinge of contempt. Not saying it's undeserved--I've never walked in your shoes, and I can imagine the medical profession being exhausting and one of high-burnout.
But, it does make me think of how things have changed in this regard, for both doctors and patients. Time was that doctors made house calls, knew every patient personally, and frequently cared for multiple-generations of a family. There seemed to be a certain intimacy baked into the profession. Of course, that's pretty much impossible today with insurance, medical costs, etc. making medical practices more of a numbers game.
On the other end, patients are consumers like any other. And, after running a consumer-facing business for many years, I can say that there seems to be an unreasonably high-expectation of service and outright deference to the customer--sometimes bordering on a sort of pathological entitlement.
The result is that there seems to be a lot of hostility baked into transactions and other professional interactions. Given the personal nature of one's health, I can only imagine this to be amplified.
They (some) still do. But they have to have their patients' numbers, not the other way round, if they want to have a life of their own.
Some people can devote the totality of their life to patients, and it's a good thing if the article author could find some of them I guess, but most doctors also have a family and their own needs, which is extremely difficult if your patients can call you whenever they want.
Doctor or not, you don't want to risk receiving constant calls from a few particularly difficult patients at any time of the day or night while you're trying to lead a life with a husband/wife and kids. And that's not even taking into account the potential for abuse from other (or the same) patients who will find there a method to bypass appointments and to avoid paid consultations.
On the other hand, email works very well for "push requests" from patients, and is a lot less disruptive for the doctor.
Time was also that doctors had very few treatment options for a vast array of maladies that afflicted their patients. Now we use high technology to try to win every fight. Bedside manner is nice, but it won't stave off lymphoma.
Our romantic views on what it is to be a doctor are long gone, unless you go with orgs like MSF to ie Africa. Reality is, most of doctor's work these days is pure bureaucracy (maybe apart from surgeons). Any job that gets into this 'corporate work' state will have any positive energy drained out of it.
Do you know any doctors personally? Most of them end up pretty disappointed bitter with their work right after school - those rosy expectations meet reality. In fact, in our circle of friends where there are many young doctors, there is 0 happy with their work.