Doctors' "expertise"?

[Lindy14]

Hi Snowdrop,

I hate it when these doctors think they know it all! OK, they may have studied all the research for the medicines we take, but they're NOT studying MY! Restless Leg presentation, as I'm sure they were not studying your presentation. Like you, I froze when you said on described this condition as "benign". I'd love to see how they feel if they could be put in the situation of having the symptoms for at least a month with no effective medication!

Do you know if the person who described RLS as benign made a note of the type(s) of presentation(s) the subjects in the research study had?

I'd love to quiz them about what they noted regarding the method used for their research in relation to the finding, and also any social/psychological issues noted! When I had to study research methods, I was somewhat bored when having to examine these aspects of research in so much detail. But there has been occasions when, like this situation, I've suddenly considered these issues and fired such questions as the doctors, enjoying some of their embarrassment at having to draw up answers!

that's one for us!!

Anyway, I hope you were helped with your situation and not left to suffer.

Regards,

Lindy

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Hi Lindy, just a tip on using this forum. If you want to respond to someone's post it's best to click on "Reply to" rather than create an entirely separate post as you have done here. That way, the person you're responding to will get notified that you've responded. Otherwise, if they don't regularly read through all the posts, they'll have no idea that you've responded at all.

I do understand how aggravating it is that doctors who haven't experienced a condition themselves tend to underestimate the subjective distressing consequences of the condition.

This seems very apparent with RLS and I can also witness that even knowledgeable experts in cancer can lack insight into the holistic needs of their patients.

However, in reference to this, I think it only fair to point out that doctors sometimes use words we don't understand, but they also sometimes use words we think we understand, but actually we misinterpret.

For a doctor, "benign" doesn't mean friendly or trivial, it's the opposite of malignant. Another word with a specific medical meaning!

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Lindy14 - I believe that doctors do their best to help us. Of course they don't know everything but they know more about medical problems than most of us. They don't deserve to be embarrassed imo - that's if they are!