Patient centreness is what clients expect of doctors.  If there are clues that this is not fulfilled, trust fades rapidly.  Patients accept that their doctor have to handle other people at the same time, provided that we make an effort to justify the necessity and we explicitly show that we care for them.
 
Extending matters slightly, doctors demonstrate our regard for clients partly with being punctual, and active apologies when we cannot see them on time.  This way, clients feel our sincerity.  
 
In our clinic and hospital consultations, words have to tally with facial expressions, and body language. Phone calls can be answered especially for professional emergencies.  But everyone is expected to reduce non-work calls to bare minimum if not zero.  Now, we are partly advantaged because our children may call and we are seen by clients as caring when we answer our children – but only if we gently tell the patient of our burden to our children instead of being seen as neglecting the patient, in the middle of a consultation. The allowance does not apply to our other half, sorry, because the other half is not supposed to interfere with our professional work.  Talks to friends in front of patients are extremely inappropriate.