Doctors Tell All---And It's Bad

[PR4NOW]

An interesting article in the Atlantic about the problems with communication between doctors and patients. PR

m.theatlantic.com/magazine/...

[Clutter]

It's grim reading, PR4NOW. Too many conflicting and competing interests are getting in the way of doctor/patient relationships to the detriment of the care doctors would like to provide and the care patients would like to receive.

Healthcare has become an assembly line with specialist interventions to fix specific ills without oversight of the whole body. Patients with acute illness/injuries generally fare well but those with chronic illnesses are, in the main, poorly served.

[Spareribs in reply to Clutter]

it's been an assembly line since over a 100 years ago, along with the Model T-Ford.

Pharma decided to fund doctor training to promote their new-found converted herb to synthetic cure aka patented "Medicine".

I have not researched how some of the "sexier" diseases have gained preferential funding - e.g. Depression, Diabetes, Heart disease, Cancer etc.....

as I work in a school I can only guess the services go where the funding lies..........

[PR4NOW in reply to Spareribs]

Sparerib, it does make one wonder, given how many hypos there are, why we can't attract any attention. PR

[PR4NOW in reply to Clutter]

Clutter, I think the reasons the non-allopathic medical world has grown so much is because of the problems described in the article. I think we have more of this in the US although I do see some in the UK. I also think that there are a lot of doctors that aren't happy with the current system either. Change is going to be hard because of the entrenched money interests. PR

[shaws Administrator in reply to PR4NOW]

One of the doctors yesterday, who wrote 'The Great Cholesterol Con' pulled no punches when he explained about how it came about that statins be issued. This is the link and he also said that maybe the tide is turning as doctors are fed up in general.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malco...

[claudiasmum]

Interesting is the bit about the new patient empowerment. I have always found doctors reasonably sympathetic as long as you act totally clueless. The moment you start to challenge what they are saying, they become really hostile.

The time factor is also a massive issue. Many a time I have been told on leaving the office "it would be an idea to check your thyroid function" when a single glance at my notes would show little but thyroid tests and meds over the last 10 years. So if they don't even know that you have autoimmune thyroid problems at the beginning of the consult, how can they possibly put two and two together if you present any other symptoms?

[Glynisrose]

No, doctors have just forgotten HOW to listen!!

[Hidden]

Mmmmm, what a depressing article and do hope that the UK doesn't follow suit.

Certainly what many of us have discovered is that some doctors don't actually know the basics concerning vitamins and minerals. Even if a lab has pointed out a reading then, in my experience, the doctor will ignore it presumably believing it's not important.

The medical world has not got to grips with the fact that patients have become empowered by the world wide web and doctors are not the font of all knowledge. Egos need to be reined in and arrogance needs to be banished as it's not acceptable to treat a patient as the village idiot.

I could go on ... but I won't except to say that I agree with many of the views expressed above.

[Polaris]

Two paragraphs stood out as showing how we are following the US the way the NHS is being run :

"Today’s physicians, he tells us, see themselves not as the “pillars of any community” but as “technicians on an assembly line,” or “pawn[s] in a money-making game for hospital administrators".

and

"Lacking the time to take thorough histories or apply diagnostic skills, they order tests not because they’ve carefully considered alternative approaches but to protect themselves from malpractice suits and their patients from the poor care they’re offering them. (And, of course, tests are often lucrative.

[donna8077]

Will you all please stop with the "fashionable disease" rhetoric! Seriously! The funding goes where there is money, diabetics are seen as cash cows, do you know how that makes me feel as type one diabetic it makes me feel sick to the stomach for you to make out that we get all the funding and the support! I'd love to milk a carrot for my insulin, I truly would but I rely on my daily insulin as a lot fo you rely on your thyroxin.

I've had to fight every step of the way to get the treatment I have now for type one diabetes, 36 years of this gets old pretty quick. I thought I was coming out the other side of many years of depression too but boy hearing everyone on here call my disease which is not as easy as just avoiding sugar has made me so damn upset words cannot fully lend appreciation.

You turning on other autoimmune conditions and other chronic conditions is just tribal and it's driven by the popular press of which I have zero time and tolerance for. It's not my damn fault that pharma and medicine in the US have seen us as money making units lining their greedy pockets. I have been verbally and nearly physically attacked for being a type one diabetic in recent years, I have to hide my insulin pump because people seem to think it's like a magic wand and I have no right to it!

I thought being diagnosed with yet another autoimmune condition was the worst thing. A GP who looks at me like I've flipped the worst thing. The fact I feel suicidal most days when I feel ill. But no... It's others calling my disease "fashionable" that has really made me lose heart.

And as for saying the same thing about cancer, shame on you! Cancer is escalating at a rate that is truly shocking. I remember when it was 1 in 5 people would be affected. Then that went up to 1 in 4, it's now 1 in 3 and set to be 1 in 2 very soon! You think it's easy being treated with cancer? I know that Hashi's is a nightmare but for goodness sake wake the hell up. We all of us are being short changed on our health, and if the fracking lot get their mucky hands on the UK you can kiss goodbye any hope that health will get better.

This whole world is making money on illness and as patients with autoimmune thyroid disease it's about bloomin time we all woke up and saw that big corporations and industry are making money out of our suffering. Rather than let them divide us up into neat little boxes with our conditions as labels can we not just stand together against this?!! Is it completely unrealistic to hope that we can all fight for one very important thing?!! More energy spent on fuming about where the money does go than actually changing it! Well done, you're fighting one another rather than the people who we need to stand up to!

[shaws Administrator]

PR4NOW thanks for this article, it is very thought provoking. At our Conference yesterday (it was a great one) I got the impression too that doctors are disillusioned and want change. I can only praise the care my daughter has had with most of the specialists she has seen over the years, many of whom have been absolute gems. There has been the odd one or two who hasn't 'seen' the patient but only the disease.

[PR4NOW in reply to shaws]

shaws, do you know if they videoed the speakers and will that be available?

I would love to hear Dr. Midgley's presentation. PR

[shaws Administrator in reply to PR4NOW]

Yes, there was a video being made. You would love to have been a fly on the wall. All the speakers were excellent. Dr Steel, in particular, (also appears on a morning show on our TV) looked quite shocked when he asked people to put up their hands if had trouble being diagnosed. I think, all hands, were put up. Dr Midgley told us precisely what he thought about his peers.

[PR4NOW in reply to shaws]

shaws, you are right, I wish I could have been there, bit of a long flight. PR

[shaws Administrator in reply to PR4NOW]

It is but the video should be good. He said about his research and the difficulty of getting things published but he said he would go on. He must be quite past retirement age and it must be so frustrating that their research isn't at least published.

[shaws Administrator in reply to shaws]

CarolynB, who was at the Conference has replied to a members and I have copied (in part) of what she said re Dr Midgley:

Recently Dr Midgley and his team have shown that the relationship between TSH and T4 is not at all as doctors currently believe if you are either euthyroid or hypothyroid but on thyroid hormone replacement. As you fit in the second category, your TSH isn't particularly helpful for determining whether you are on the correct dose of thyroid hormone replacement. Hopefully Dr Midgley's paper will be published in the not too distant future so that people like ourselves have some backup when visiting our GPs and those good GPs that want to help will have some evidence to present as to why they are treating according to symptoms rather than BTA guidelines.