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From Men's Journal:
Every time you walk into a physician's office, you run the risk of overtreatment: Tests you don't need, medications that are ineffective (or dangerous), procedures that cause more problems than they solve. In many cases the best thing for your health is to do nothing.
Make no mistake: A good doctor is, or should be, your most trusted resource if you're sick. If you're not sick and he wants to treat you anyway, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad doctor. But it does make him a player in a system that operates according to the unspoken and often unexamined assumption that more treatment is better for the patient. It's unquestionably better for the financial health of the stakeholders in the system: the doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, the health-insurance companies, and the hospitals. If you don't know how the game is played, the odds go up that you'll wind up the loser.
What do you people think, will people change if they know this?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:21PM
Please. People fear science and medicine too much as it is.
Good physicians will order tests on people who aren't sick, and may even prescribe medications even though the person doesn't perceive that he has any medical problems.
That doesn't mean the physician shouldn't be trusted, wants to line his own pockets, or is in the pocket of "Big Medicine".
In fact, I would suggest that "Big Medicine" is behind articles like this. Don't get tested if you're feeling well. Don't get vaccinated. Don't take medications to prevent the first disease event. You'll just be paying for more medications and health care in the long run.
Population Medicine/Preventative Medicine uses statistics to determine what tests are needed on a healthy group to screen for diseases, to find them early so that they can be treated before they become more a burden on society. Sometimes they're wrong, and the guidelines change. And sometimes they advocate starting treatments earlier because the cost of primary prevention (to prevent the first "event") has gone down for whatever reason. We have to trust the Population Medicine guys because they're the ones that run studies on tens of thousands of patients and can make correlations and cost assessments of a condition over a generation.
If we advocate for people to not trust their physicians, aren't we promoting an anti-science agenda?
But don't listen to me. I'm just a physician. If one of my patients refuses to take a medication or perform a test, I listen to their reasoning and try to change their perspective to understand where I'm coming from. If I can't, I just document in the chart so that I don't have to try again in the future. (I don't want to pester them too much over it -- if I do, I'll just lose the patient.)
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday September 25 2014, @05:41AM
And to a large degree, rightfully so.
I used to be very much pro-doctor. Today? I'm very skeptical to take anything at face value and I encourage anyone to challenge their doctor on everything. I was married somewhere between 10 and 15 years ago. Since then my body and my wife's body has changed -- normal aging stuff, I suppose, but we've developed a few chronic conditions. In that time, we have both been lied to, cheated by, and given wrong advice more often than not by doctors. At this point, I think there are more bad doctors than good ones out there. The best thing I ever did was stumble across a book for my first chronic condition. It was written by a person who took 20 years to diagnose herself. She gave better advice than the two professional doctors I saw who were supposedly professionals in their field. Her book kept me off medication. Was she against meds? No. She dedicated a whole chapter to them describing when it was best for you and how to work with your doctor to choose the best medications for you. (Other chapters covered things like medical descriptions, short term fixes, choosing good doctors, exercising for the condition, proper diet, etc.) Both doctors gave me advice that would have made my condition worse. One, after a way-too-short 30 minute exam, wanted me on medication which I haven't needed at all. All of those experiences left a very sour taste in my mouth.
As for my other conditions? I have yet to find a doctor that will treat all of my conditions together. I have chronic symptoms that interact with one another, flare up together, and go away together. I can only get treatment for one at at time. The last time I went to a doctor for one part of it, it took me three months of follow ups. There is no way I'm going through that again for every other symptom I have unless I'm dying. At that point, I'll be in a hospital and maybe someone will listen to everything that is going. But I doubt that too. You should hear my friend's horror stories of doctors and hospitals dealing with his paralysis.
I am definitely not anti-medicine, but your professional colleagues are pushing people away from doctors and medicine. We, the non-doctors, and rightly becoming very wary of people in your profession. If you're a good doctor as you claim, we need a lot more like you. If you want more of my story (since I may seem like a nut job to you without the details), you can email me privately and I'll answer any questions you have.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday September 25 2014, @06:26AM
Damn it. I wanted to say something else about this, but I'm encountering the lameness / spam filter and it won't let me post my other comment. Anyone have any ideas about this?