In these busy times, it’s no surprise that the patient-doctor relationship has eroded. Increased productivity requirements have shortened the amount of time you have to spend with each patient so many physicians are opting to communicate with patients via email.

Each month, I get a variety of newsletters sent to my email inbox. They include one from a garden club, one from my mortgage broker and one from an employment agency that I use periodically in our medical practice. I read them all on a regular basis but not for the reasons you might think.

Yes, each of them contains relevant information about gardening, bank loan percentage rates or available candidates for hire. However, what keeps me interested is that they don’t just talk about those things. They include the latest events around town, a weekly forecast, recipes and even a joke of the day. I probably wouldn’t even remember my mortgage broker’s name 6 years later if it weren’t for this newsletter that keeps her in front of me in a non-threatening way.