Negative words about others have been around for thousands of years, as Plato noted above. Why is it that through the ages when one hears or reads a negative review about one’s self that it hurts so bad, and in many cases stirs up our anger to its maximum level? It is because the negative reviewer has attacked our name. What is in a name? Our names represent not only us, but all of those in the past who came before us as well as all of those who will follow in the future. The negative review hurts so much because it is a one sided attack against our name.

On the positive side of things, let’s always look for those “Silver Linings Playbook” (my personal Best Picture of the Year 2013),the negative review can be taken as constructive criticism to improve ourselves and our practices. During my career as a facial plastic surgeon in Los Angeles, I have seen and treated tens of thousands of patients, with 99.9% very satisfied and happy patients. It is the two or three patients who are not happy or satisfied who took it upon themselves to attack my name and reputation publicly in social media that are the reason for this blog entry. Even from the most slanderous and unfair attacks, I personally try to find the good in the criticism for improvement. I much prefer to write about the positive aspects of beauty and health, teach about new safe and effective treatments, and answer patients questions about their health and aesthetics (see my over 2,500 answers on RealSelf.com). Instead today I ask of you just one thing.

With the explosion of social media and sites such as Yelp!, Vitals.com, Health Grades, etc., reviews of physicians are here to stay, and unfortunately even the most expert,skilled, experienced, and truly caring physicians will be the target of negative reviews of unhappy patients (perhaps unhappy people who are not satisfied with many things in their lives).

The one thing that I ask of you is that you look at all of the reviews and responses before judging the negative anonymous review attacks on the individual’s name. This will take more effort on sites such as Yelp!, where the great majority of positive reviews are hidden in their “filtered review” section which requires deciphering a widget and hoping that you guessed correctly before you are allowed to see the rest of the reviews. Yelp! admits that if the individual spends thousands of dollars of advertising money every year then, “We have ways of making the negative reviews go away.” Unfortunately they don’t take away the unreversible damage and hurt done to our name.

Thank you for taking the time to read this! Be well!

Addendum: Social commerce specialist Reevoo recently looked at the real impact of negative reviews on business with the results presented in a recent report. Findings include:

Consumers spend four times as long on a site when they interact with bad reviews, trust what they are reading more and are more likely to convert;
68% say they trust good reviews more when they see a mixed bag of opinions and scores;
95% suspect fake reviews or censorship when they don’t see anything negative;

The research also shows negative reviews are driving up engagement and have become one of the most popular features of websites with double the amount of people actively seeking them out as those looking for positive comments.

Those looking for negative reviews spend more than 17 minutes on a site compared with normal consumers, who spend just over three minutes, and they view almost four times as many pages.

And, the good news, when they do come across a product or service with a bad review, they tend to move on to the next one with less than 1% leaving the website.

Read more at http://www.tnooz.com/2012/03/15/news/why-companies-should-not-hide-from-bad-reviews/#EO2QqZim95BlIUyy.99

Dr. Michael Persky and Dr. Sarmela Sunder are located in Encino, California and Beverly Hills, California (The Lasky Clinic) but service all of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Including, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Hancock Park, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Westlake, Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, La Canada, Pasadena, and more. Please subscribe to our blog by clicking the link above, right, and “Like” us on Facebook. Thank you!
+ Michael Persky