James Bradley, Lecturer in History of Medicine/Life Science at University of Melbourne, Australia, writes an entertaining piece on how the process of patient diagnosis has changed:
There's also a serious lesson here regarding why a physical consultation by a trained, experienced doctor is far superior to an on-line consultation, not to mention the dangers of trying to diagnose yourself via 'Dr Google' or amateurs in on-line forums...
Neil
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AussieNeil
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While there is truth in THIS story, my own story would indicate that Dr. Google combined with my own research consistently does a better job than the "trained professional." Since being diagnosed with CLL (1 year late BTW as the trained professional filed the report and didn't tell me until 1 year later when I had a serious infection) my medical history has been a series of medical mistakes. Arrogance, bureaucracy, the white curtain, ignorance, ambivalence and simply not knowing the patient lead me to believe that the medical community that surrounds me HAS in fact lost their senses. On the other hand, I do know the patient, have a 185 IQ, a doctorate, a few years of medical training behind me and was surprised to see that even Wikipedia had better information that applied to my situation than I was getting from our cancer centre. Hmmmmm
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