I am Dr. Scott Haig's kind of patient and he is, in one sense, my kind of doctor ... but he's also a standout pompous ass in a profession that has more than its fair share.
Haig authored this diatribe in Time about his distaste for patients who have the audacity to research their own medical conditions online. The screed and its headline - "When the Patient is a Googler" - drip with contempt for these medical do-it-yourselfers and their inability to trust their doctors over whatever latest quackery they've stumbled upon via the Internet.
My point is not that he doesn't have one, but that in making it in such a ham-handed, even mean-spirited manner he ends up saying more about himself and his own shortcomings than he does the difficult patients.
Exhibit A illustrating Haig's point is Susan, a 40-something mother with a bum knee who's found his office for an initial visit. Haig asks us to share the pain of having to treat this "brainsucker."
After gratuitously establishing that Susan's 3-year-old is a "little monster" and Susan a terrible mom, he gets to the meat of the matter: She's a doctor's nightmare because she used the Internet to find out too much about him - including personal information - and she demonstrates a complete unwillingness to defer to his expertise. Haig writes:
Susan got me thinking about patients. Nurses are my favorites - they know our language and they're used to putting their trust in doctors. And they laugh at my jokes. But engineers, as a class, are possibly the best patients. They're logical and they're accustomed to the concept of consultation - they're interested in how the doctor thinks about their problem. They know how to use experts. If your orthopedist thinks about arthritis, for instance, in terms of friction between roughened joint surfaces, you should try to think about it, generally, in the same way. There is little use coming to him or her for help if you insist your arthritis is due to an imbalance between yin and yang, an interruption of some imaginary force field or a dietary deficiency of molybdenum. There's so much information (as well as misinformation) in medicine - and, yes, a lot of it can be Googled - that one major responsibility of an expert is to know what to ignore.
Susan had neither the trust of a nurse nor the teachability of an engineer. She would ignore no theory of any culture or any quack, regarding her very common brand of knee pain. On and on she went as I retreated further within. I marveled, sitting there silenced by her diatribe. Hers was such a fully orbed and vigorous self-concern that it possessed virtue in its own right. Her complete and utter selfishness was nearly a thing of beauty.
Susan sounds like a piece of work, all right, but I wasn't under the impression that doctors were trained to treat only the easy ones.
As to his point about self-diagnosis: Some of you may recall that four years ago I had a heart attack that turned out to be the least of my worries at the time. In treating the heart attack, doctors couldn't help but notice the golf-ball-sized tumor that was either attached to or inside of my heart wall. They couldn't tell conclusively, even through a biopsy, where exactly the tumor was or whether it was benign or malignant. Removal was recommended, which would mean open-heart surgery.
I was referred to one of Boston's most famous hospitals where a highly regarded cardiac diagnostician concurred - "If it was in me, I'd have it out today," he said - after which he sent me across campus to see a surgeon who I would learn was head of the hospital's heart transplant unit. (My primary care physician of 25 years, also a cardiologist, concurred with their opinions.)
Now there are two ways to react to the realization that you are going to be operated on by the head of a famous hospital's heart transplant team: 1) I'm so incredibly fortunate to live so close to such extraordinary care, and; 2) this is no trifling matter because surgeons of this stature don't trifle.
At no point did I think, "Hey, maybe I should do a little Googling just to make sure these guys didn't miss something."
Yet several people asked me whether or not I was doing my own research, with one colleague going so far as to express his disbelief that I was not.
Call me crazy, but I'm with Susan's Dr. Haig on this one. It's not that I believe the four doctors who were advising me to be infallible; it's that I was in no position - and certainly no frame of mind - to take up cardiac medicine with a few hours of online searching. And, to be frank, I was too busy being scared and getting a will together.
However, had I decided to be less trusting and more like Susan - even if I was a pain in the butt - I'd like to think my doctors would have shown me a degree of understanding and sympathy befitting their profession and my predicament.
I wouldn't expect them to whine about me being a lousy patient.
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For Who?
I think here the key question is, who are you doing the research for? If you're doing it to enlighten yourself a little more, that's fine. If you're doing it because you want to teach your doctor how to treat you, that's usually a bad idea.
Percentage of MDs who come across with the pills...
So the patients use Google, and the MDs give them the drugs they ask for 76% of the time -- why not cut out the middleman? I think I got some mail about that.
Quacks
My mother went to a Quack-Factory...you know the ones, a mini-strip mall with about half a dozen practicing physicians that work there. She had a lung infection and needed diagnosis and antibiotics. So she goes to this hack-shop (the only Doctors office opened on a Saturday...her normal physician was on vacation) and they tell her it's bronchitis and prescribe Levaquin. Note: They didn't prescribe a drug that would be sufficient to combat the bronchitis, they essentially brought a M1 Abrams to a knife fight. They prescribed a 'wonder drug'. So my mom takes the Levaquin according to the prescription and after a week her body shuts down. We have her rushed to the hospital and she's almost paralyzed completely. After a week in the hospital, no Doctors could figure out what was wrong with her. They brought in all kinds of doctors and specialists, Rheumatism, Infectious Diseases, you name it. No one could figure out what was wrong. So my mom got some of her feeling back but was still virtually immobile. In her time at home she did some research and it turns out that Levaquin is a drug that was formerly BANNED by the FDA (Cypro), slightly remodified, and re-released under a new name. The drug is a sort of Super Antibiotic in that it kills ALL bacteria in the body; problem is, there is some bacteria in the body that is BENEFICIAL and NEEDS TO BE THERE. Over the course of 6 months my mother got better but she still has lingering problems. After finding a Yahoo group for the drug Levaquin, there are people who have had some SERIOUS problems from this drug and who continue, over 5 years after initial prescription, to endure suffering and pain. Doctors, by and large, SUCK. Doctors are like any other group of people on this planet; a few winners, a whole bunch of losers. When Doctors in general can put up a better track record of correct diagonsis and treatments instead of playing 'Pin the Tail on the Disease' and can also reject being swayed by pharmaceutical companies, maybe by and large, they will be taken more seriously.
Facts vs. Quacks
I'm glad you got your mom out of a bad situation, but your information is seriously flawed.
1) Cipro (generic ciprofloxacin) is 100% legal and in no way banned by the FDA for human use. (I visit a travel doctor before going somewhere remote with little medical care. It's saved me more than once.)
2) Baytril (a Cipro derivative for animals) was banned by the FDA to protect the efficacy of Cipro in people. Putting broad spectrum antibiotics in animal feed meant developing infections resistant to the drug. The FDA banned Baytril to make sure Cipro stayed as safe as possible. (This may be one of the possibly 3 good things the FDA has done in as many years.)
3) Levaquin and Cipro are in the same antibiotic family, they aren't the same drug (or slight modifications).
You need to make sure when you do find a medical error that you don't go overboard and start believing headlines without reading.
To JLee
JLee,
Maybe you need a humility check.
The poster you replied to was correct. Previous drugs in the quinolone family have indeed been banned for small things like melting someone's liver. Why don't you do a little googling? LOL
The quinolones are a highly toxic class of drug. Lariam also has had horrible effects. Quins can cause permanent damage to many of the body's systems. How does neuropathy grab you?
You are correct about non therapeutic use of Baytril being banned in the United States. But not before Bayer fought the ban for a few years.
Try these websites out for size: www.fqresearch.org
www.fqvictims.org www.drugvictims.org
No doctor is more smug or superior than the doctor facing a patient who has been injured by a prescription. Doctors just want to take the money, write a scrip and send you on your way within minutes. 50% of doctors are pathological narcissists.
Do a bit more googling before you correct someone (irony intended).
Not sure he's all that pompous....
Given the increasing prevalence of these idiots who constantly place personal emotion above logic, I don't think the doctor is all that pompous--in part because he quickly realized he could not help this patient. (This is no more a "punt" than when a psychologist refers a patient needing drug therapy to a phychiatrist.) It's not just their stupid, selfish, egocentric attitudes, it's also their refusal to attempt to understand what others try to communicate to them--a total refusal to engage in dialog. A non-medical example is present in the wild opponents of cellular telephone service. You can't even begin to discuss how the radiated power from an antenna decreases with the square of the distance from the broadcast antenna (or the cube of the distance in that rare, non-planar, truly "omnidirectional" case) even though this is established, uncontroverted fact (unlike, say, the effect of 1.8 GHz radiation on living cell structure.) Likewise this patient will NEVER understand that she has a difficult course of treatment ahead--it will always be the fault of an incompentent doctor (or 35 of them) for not telling her about that secret witch doctor cure from deep inside the pyramid. We need to stop coddling these idiots and let them limp, much like banks no longer spend time trying to help meth-heads balance their checkbook. Personally I still help the elderly and those from out-of-town, but I no longer spend time trying to teach ditzes how to read maps. At a certain point, endless assistance is only an enabling of bad behavior.
Doctor more right than not on this one
I thought that the patient was far more pompous than the Dr. She'd already booked an appt with another doctor. It's pretty clear she didn't think anyone was an expert, and she was "shopping" for someone who philosophically agreed with her on what to do.
LOL
calvoiper and KC,
You wouldn't be doctors, would you? Your arrogance is showing.
If a patient arrives in pain and seeking treatment, the job of the doctor they are PAYING is to treat them. The patient should not have to 'laugh at their jokes' as the doctor admits he longs for. They are there in hopes of a treatment, even a cure.
If you want to be useful why not discuss the fact that a diagnosis cannot always be made in the 10 minutes alloted by most health care programs. But doctors write a scrip for the symptoms and soon the patient has a whole new list of ailments.
How many doctors even ask about diet or lifestyle?
If a patient arrives with a bit of knowledge because they so far have gone undiagnosed or untreated it does not make them a 'nut'. It makes them a responsible human being who WANTS TO GET WELL. My God you two sound like narcissists.
With attitudes like these and the one in the article, no wonder people are turning away from allopathic medicine. Doctors seem to be seeking a circle jerk to their ego rather than to uphold their Hippocratic oath. "First do no harm" should include patient morale.
Now go play golf.
arrogant jerks
calvoiper and KC,
You wouldn't be doctors, would you? Your arrogance is showing.
If a patient arrives in pain and seeking treatment, the job of the doctor they are PAYING is to treat them. The patient should not have to 'laugh at their jokes' as the doctor admits he longs for. They are there in hopes of a treatment, even a cure.
If you want to be useful why not discuss the fact that a diagnosis cannot always be made in the 10 minutes alloted by most health care programs. But doctors write a scrip for the symptoms and soon the patient has a whole new list of ailments.
How many doctors even ask about diet or lifestyle?
If a patient arrives with a bit of knowledge because they so far have gone undiagnosed or untreated it does not make them a 'nut'. It makes them a responsible human being who WANTS TO GET WELL. My God you two sound like narcissists.
With attitudes like these and the one in the article, no wonder people are turning away from allopathic medicine. Doctors seem to be seeking a circle jerk to their ego rather than to uphold their Hippocratic oath. "First do no harm" should include patient morale.
Now go play golf.
Doctors are boneheads who
Doctors are boneheads who are worried about power, not medicine. Look at what the man's complaints are. The women will not defer to his power and expertise. The doctor plainly states he likes people that defer to him like engineers. Is this man a doctor treating illness, or is he in medicine to inflate his ego, by having people worship him and do exactly what he says?
Doctors are also boneheads because they don't know as much as they think. This doctor makes some snide comment about Yin and Yang. Most western doctors are so stoopid they do not even know about Yin and Yang, and how it affects the human body. They cover up their stoopidity and lack of knowledge, by claiming that Yin and Yang do not exist, or that the idea of Yin and Yang is some primitive kind of medicine that has been debunked.
Doctors are stoopid. They are not the all knowing experts they want you to think they are. Basically Doctors are your next door neighbor in a white jacket. Doctors can be just as stupid, ignorant, stubborn, abusive, and uncaring as your next door neighbor.