I'll simply share the facts about our experience with Dr. Laug. My wife and I brought in our 16 mo. old daughter for her first visit (we had just moved to Knoxville). The following were our experiences and complaints.
Dr. Laug did a very poor job of listening. A lot of our discussion was about nutrition--he seems to care very much about it. We told him we are very conscious about not eating processed sugar or added sugar. We also don't eat much bread and simple carbs due to having Celiac in the family. Even so, he took considerable time to lecture us about not eating breads, pastas, any anything that doesn't have "100% whole grain" on the package because it is "pure sugar" otherwise. My wife is an almost-certified nutritionist. When that was mentioned he said, "Oh this will be fun," and began to test my wife's knowledge--this time about our decision to not feed our daughter dairy in the form of milk (FYI she does get much calcium from cheese, yogurt, and other sources). It wasn't until my wife said, "Sorry, I don't like to be tested for fun" that he backed down.
He explained medicine in technical terms without explaining his goal. For example, he said he wanted to take a baseline blood test. Without explaining why he wanted to take it, he then began to name all the different kinds of cell types that are differentiated and quantified through the test. Thankfully I was once a pre-med major I. College before deciding to become and engineer, so I wasn't caught off guard. But in all his knowledge he never explained why he was taking the test. So at the end I asked him, "So what is your goal for doing this test? Is it just a standard test to take? Or are you screening for diseases like Leukemia, or what's it otherwise for?" It was only then that he explained that he does the test to screen for potential diseases. In my opinion he did a poor job of communicating what he was doing and why. And I imagine other parents could be confused or feel inferior with how he explained the science of medicine.
Lastly, he interacted very very little with our daughter. His focus was on us, the parents, and didn't seem to know how or have the desire to warm up to our girl, connect with her, and make her feel like he was a friend. She was uncomfortable but compliant only because she was with her parents. Regardless, we've had two other pediatricians before moving to Knoxville and they were amazingly good with children, compassionate, and also respectful of boundaries little kids may have.
Overall, I don't recommend Dr. Laug. There were times my wife and I felt like he was being condescending and other times he seemed not be listening or paying attention to what we were telling him at all. We won't be going back.
The nurse who checked us out was kind and friendly. When she said it was time to take a blood sample I told her kindly that we were "going to skip that for today..." because my wife and I knew we wouldn't be returning. We'll get it done elsewhere (or just have the results from our last pediatrician from 12mo. forwarded). The nurse didn't have a problem with our decision to skip the test, and then we left. read more