I had one this morning. For about five years I'd been going to this clinic and about two years ago, the doctor moved on to his own and since then, one doctor was there for a year (he gave me a good exam of the upper half of my body and at one point as he was auscultating my aorta, I was half-expecting him to have me undo my pants to listen to my femoral arteries, but that didn't happen. He did give me a good abdominal exam), then after he left, another one showed up at the clinic back this February. I had gone there to get a prescription refill and as he was seeing me for the first time, he wanted to listen to my chest, so I started to take off my shirt. "That's not necessary," he said as he stethed through the fabric, and then he wrote a prescription for several months.
This month, the prescription ran out and when I called to set up an appointment, I learned that he had only been there on a temporary basis and already had a clinic of his own perhaps a mile away. So I made an appointment at his "new" place and I decided to have him give me a physical. Perhaps it would be more thorough there, so I deliberately put on long pants as well as clean white briefs (the idea being maybe the long pants will increase the chance of having to take them off for the physical). I need not have bothered. After the usual paperwork, blood pressure and other pre-appointment blah-blah, I quickly began to suspect when I saw that I could see out the exam room window (and others could see into the exam room! There were curtains but they were open) that this was not going to be the day for a full clothes-off exam. (At least the exam table was well away from the window as this might've been the largest exam room I'd ever seen; it was the size of a small bedroom) And I was correct.
The physical was look in the ears and throat, do the test where the doctor has you follow his finger with just your eyes, and when he got out his stethoscope, I started to take my shirt off. "No, you're fine," he said and once again listened to my chest through the shirt. Maybe thirty seconds of lying on the exam table for a quick check of my liver (I pulled up my shirt on my own volition) and I was done. All in less time than it probably would take you to read all this.
Granted, at these low-cost community clinics, I can't expect the Mayo Clinic, or is it the Ketchup Clinic? (Bah-dum-PRASH!!) But I'll bet if I talk to my respiratory therapist friend who works in a hospital in California, he would say that he has to listen to his patients bare-chested to properly hear if anything is amiss.
I still plan to stay with this doctor for the time being, but maybe as a Christmas present to myself I'll see if I have the bread to see a general practitioner/osteopath that I'd been to for massage therapy once or twice for a full physical, EKG, the works, even as a one-time deal. I'd consider him as a more regular doctor but aside from the expense, he's a bit far for me.
On an unrelated note, a little while back, I went and got three days of mail out of my mailbox and found I got one piece that belongs to the fellow in the next apartment. I just learned from looking at his address that his last name is Glans. Isn't that a part of the penis? (Of course I won't mention that to him.)