We will never find the perfect doctor, as they are all human and none of them are perfect. It comes as no surprise to most of us that they call their profession "the practice of medicine." One of the leading causes of death and injury in the United States is medical mistakes.
It is calculated by the
Institute of Medicine that medical errors actually kill anywhere from 44,000 to 90,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year.
This figure is more than those who are killed by automobile accidents or those who succumb to breast cancer.
Regardless of whether you are generally healthy, or live with a chronic illness, you still need a physician you can trust. Though an occasional small mistake may occur, it is especially important that you have a doctor who is eager to be part of your medical team for both short-term and long-term treatment.
Are there some definite signs you should not listen to your doctors, seek a second opinion, or even change doctors? Yes!
1. Your doctor is quick to speak and slow to listen, rarely hearing all of your symptoms or asking questions about them. He quickly records his interpretation of what you are saying before you have begun to explain your symptoms or the situation.
2. Your doctor is persistent about prescribing medicines that are recently available. He does not explain what the medication is, why you need it, how it will help your situation, long-term effects, or if there is a plan to get you off of it. You can see the promotional items for the medication around his office.
3. Your doctor acts as if he knows less about your condition that even you do. You leave the appointments feeling like all you did was report in your latest symptoms while he took notes.
4. Your doctor doesn't have confidence to treat you, rarely providing actual advice or instructions, but rather says, "What do you think we should do?" or "You do whatever you think is best."
5. Your doctor is swift to request tests or procedures that could have a negative bearing on your current health or illness. He doesn't seem to understand that tests that may be of minor influence on the body of a healthy person can be a major factor in your well-being. The best doctor will keep all of your body in mind when making choices about tests, not just the area that he is a specialist for.
6. Your doctor seems to humor you, looks at you as if he doubts your symptoms, and smiles and writes notes. You feel like he is being condescending rather than a part of your medical team.
7. Your doctor refuses to let you see the medical records he has on you and your condition. If you request them he says he will send them to another physician, but he seems to go out of his way to make sure you don't personally receive them. At some point you may apply for disability financial support and the social security disability review doctors will want to review your medical history. It is important the records are accurate.
8. Your doctor is never accessible when you need him the most. On the rare occasion when you have an emergency he is unable to provide you with an appointment promptly. Your prescriptions are not refilled when requested. He rarely has his office return your calls and he is unable to be reached for hours even when he is paged for an urgent situation.
9. Your doctor does not believe you are in the amount of pain you claim you are in. He seems reluctant about prescribing you with pain medication, despite the severity of the pain, and your proven responsibility with medications.
10. Your doctor is never open to consulting other medical professionals or faxing his notes over to your other physicians. He thinks he can solve all of your medical needs and feels threatened when you want to consult with another source, specialist, or someone else on your medical team.
The best doctor will listen to you thoroughly, take good notes, explain the benefits and drawbacks of medications, and make you feel like you are an integral part of your medical team.
While there may be no such thing as the perfect physician and it may take a few referrals to find the best doctor to meet your medical needs and be a good personality fit, don't give up. Never sacrifice your health just because you don't want to hurt a doctor's feelings by leaving him and seeking health care elsewhere.
Have you ever changed doctors? What was the reason for the change?
Mr. Bananahealth-and-fitness-buzz.blogspot
Comments (16)
I've had to change psychiatrists & psychologists multiple times for all of the above reasons. They all seem to have God complexes. Fortunately, my PCP is on point. I've been with her for 14 years and would follow her if she ever decided to leave the clinic she's currently with and open her own practice.
I like these, and appreciate the emphasis on the beginning that doctors are people too! :)
I've also had to change psychiatrists and psychologists. I first started seeing a psychiatrist when I was about 5 years old... now I'm 20, and I've literally seen well over a dozen shrinks. So many of them are SO weird!
I'm currently switching to another family doctor cuz the one I have now is retiring soon and his office is far from where I live. He also has his own health problems so it's understandable that he needs as much rest as possible. I'm on the waiting list for a doctor 5mins away from my house but it'd feel weird to be with a new doctor since I've been with mine ever since I was a baby. My mom even worked for him at one time so he and my family go wayyyy back.
What a helpful list. I'll make sure to keep this around.
That sounds like all of my previous doctors.
I had the worst doctor ever... He would only vaguely listen to my symptoms and then give me a diagnosis without even a real check-up, so I've been prescribed the wrong antibiotic on several occasions (With MRSA in the headlines that's really dangerous). He had a med student with him one day, which is fine because I am also going to school for a health career and how else can we learn besides practicing? The problem was that the med student asked all the questions, then the doctor came back in and they both stood in front of me and accused me of being pregnant. It had absolutely nothing to do with my symptoms, but I couldn't take certain drugs if I was pregnant. They didn't ASK me if I was pregnant. They said something to the effect of, " You know, if you're pregnant you can't take this." and I was like, yeah, I know. I can't possibly be pregnant. They seriously stood there for 5 more minutes lecturing me for women being careless and getting pregnant. I obviously never went back to this doctor again.
i had great experiences with most doctors here in canada. but i've had terrible experiences (similar to the ones above) with my orthodontist!
They call it the "practice of medicine" because if it wasn't a "practice"... as in, working to better it and perfect it as much as humanly possible... we'd all be God.
So really, that's the stupidest reason to hate a doctor.
Man, it pisses me off so much.
Everyone thinks doctor's are supposed to be super humans.
There are some rude ones that don't care about anything and are just in it for the money... but then there's some that absolutely love their job, and while they make mistakes, it's not like you could do better. They aren't God, they aren't Superman.
For #4, The doctor asks you what "you want to do", because, thanks to the internet, people think that by looking up some symptoms on the internet makes them an MD. So, if he's anything like the doctors I've studied with, they want to hear what the person THINKS they have and what the person THINKS they want, and they try to work around it.
When I went in for my dislocated the knee, the doctor told me to decide what I wanted to do. It was either: stop playing soccer, go to physical therapy and take it easy, or surgery to clear the spiky cartilage causing chondromalacia.
It's not like, "Oh you have a bacterial infection? Well do you want antibiotics or not?" Because if you want to get rid of bacteria, you need an antibiotic.
For #6, if you go into a psychiatrist's office and tell him, "I think I am bipolar because I'm angry one minute and happy the next and bla bla bla." Of course he's going to smile and kind of chuckle. Because 70% of the population has no idea what the fuck Bipolar disorder is. It's not the changing of moods within hours, or even days. It's over weeks of time, usually months. So pardon him if he thinks its funny that you, a non-MD, is trying to his job, the MD.
For #8... nothing makes me more angry when someone calls at 3AM and expects a prescription to be filled RIGHT THEN AND THERE. First of all, that takes time. Why the fuck are you awaking the doctor at 3 AM? He has to sleep, too. When he doesn't, he does those completely UN-HUMAN things like make mistakes. If he's on vacation, don't be a dumbass. That's all I've got to say. If it's such a big deal, call the doctor he has covering him or go to the ER.
The calls and the appointment thing is his office manager. And the office manager has more to do than take care of JUST YOU. There's insurance to get, there's OTHER PATIENTS... God forbid there be other patients, if there is not an appointment slot open If they haven't gotten back to you in a week, I'd suggest going into the office. It might just be that they can't understand your message, which is the case in a lot of geriatric/old people calls. Or you talk too low, you have a weird accent, or you straight up forgot to leave your number of name. And when he isn't reached for hours... GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM. He'll get to you there. And if he's not getting back at you for hours, there's either: a meeting, he's doing his rounds at the hospital... you know, checking out OTHER people who might be in MORE of an emergency than you and who also called before you and who also demand his undivided attention just like you.
9. To prescribe certain pain medications, whether you know it or not, is to call the insurance company. Make sure you are ALLOWED to have it, regardless of what he says. And to make sure it doesn't interfere with your medications, with your psyche, with your other health problems, etc. Which is really the pharmacist's job. So that's not just HIM the prescription has to go through, it's about 5 people. Calm your little impatient panties down. If he doesn't believe you, well, I understand that. But bitching because he's not giving you pain medication is extremely ignorant in today's world.
If that's your main beef, then go complain to a health insurance company, not the doctor.
@direwolf005@xanga - No doctor is going to believe any "child-bearing aged" woman that says she isn't having sex. Even if you aren't. They just have to assume, with the current statistics and lack of morale in the world, that everyone is having sex.
And that if you take this drug, you and/or the baby could be at risk with a birth defect, etc. And with all the premarrital sex that's going on, for some reason, people are still apprehensive about abortions. This it poses a problem.
So excuse them for trying to make you understand.
The wrong antibiotic is just stupid of him. So in that case, go ahead and leave. But just because they're lecturing you about not getting pregnant is not reason to up and leave.
My doctor doesn't listen to me. She wouldn't test me for hypoglycemia when I told her I'd been having symptoms, and that it runs in my family.
Although I've been in at least three times in the past maybe four years for my back problems, my doctor still refuses to prescribe me pain medication. If ibuprofen worked, why would I be going to the doctor? Seriously. She didn't even offer me anything when I went in for a broken tail bone two years ago. Get a cushion and take ibuprofen! Yeah, right woman.
I kind of hate my doctor. My mom's going to find us a new one in the next year or so, she said. Thank god.
If my doctor looked like any of those four in the picture, you couldn't get me to change no matter what you told me! *rimshot*
But, seriously, why the hot doctors? That's not realistic. I have never been treated an even relatively attractive female doctor in her early-mid twenties before. And, yes, I know that wasn't the point of the article, but I rarely go to the doctor anyway.
This is a great list! I, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way. I've been through several doctors, and have only just recently (as in, a year ago) found one that I feel really listens to me.
Of course, I'm kind of hard on doctors now--if they had listened to me from the beginning (my symptoms began when I was 13, so almost 10 years ago), I would have been able to control my eventual diagnosis--Crohn's Disease--much easier. Sad as it is to say, none of my old doctors would perform any tests or anything like that, and therefore my disease progressively worsened until I had so much scarring and bleeding that I ended up in the hospital 4 separate times.
I like doctors, and I appreciate all that they do--and I also understand that they're just human, that they make mistakes, that they're busy, etc, etc, but I can't put my deteriorating health into just anybody's hands anymore.
Again, props to you for this list! More people need to be aware of what is right/wrong in a clinic!
hmmm
Sounds like my current doctor.
But my parents refuse to change doctors since he speaks Vietnamese.