The internet has made it easier to bluff about medicine, he notes. “I think doctors who don’t use Google are basically incompetent, because there’s no way that you can know everything, and if you don’t know you should look it up.” In Trust Me Jodie Whittaker’s character uses internet searches to hide her lack of training.
How quickly does Sefton think he would get a sense that a doctor was bluffing? “If somebody was pronouncing the medical terms wrong that would be it, bang, straight away – but competency as a doctor, absolutely not.”
But when he’s asked to spell out the dangers of fake doctors, Sefton’s answer is surprising. “I honestly think the dangers are minimal. You’ve probably got a better chance with an impostor who’s really motivated to do a good job than you have with an uninterested, lazy, arrogant, qualified doctor.”
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As far back as 1996, a university study found 30 cases of bogus doctors practising medicine in the UK, including an unqualified pharmacist from Pakistan who was able to work as a GP in the UK, undetected for almost 30 years, after arriving here in 1961. He was only caught when a member of his family informed the authorities and he was jailed for five years.
I am very, very impressed that someone could do this and get away with it for 30 years in the days before Google!
This is a very interesting question! I've often thought of my Endocrinologist that I could easily do as good a job as she's done in our 4 years of appointments. Or even that given two sides of A4 paper I could write up all the information for anyine to do her job better. Might only need one side of paper!
I'm often saddened to hear friends put tremendous trust in doctors. Was listening to a friend of a friend last night talk, he's been on omeprazole for years, is in his late 20s, and now I find out he's having strange symptoms with his heart, and is being fobbed off by one doctor after another. I've tried before to give him some advice, but he won't hear it. Tried to nudge him over to the idea he needs to do his own research about his heart so he can double check the GPs, who clearly have postage stamp sized amounts of knowledge. But people just wander blindly into useless and life threatening advice.
Yet the news stories are always about alternative or non-qualified doctors that hurt people. But I've now come to the conclusion you are gambling either way. It's madness to trust any doctor of any kind without double and triple checking.
I think I would definitely give this "doctor" a miss.
Many on here, particularly the Administrators, could do a much better job than these very highly paid endocrinologists, even Professors of Endocrinology. Let's face it, once a hypo or hashis sufferer arrives on this forum, they have a much better chance of recovery than with a 'so called specialist'. is the UK really in the wealthy western world? We may as well be in Africa, the endocrinologists may actually have better knowledge and better ethics over there on that continent.
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Could really use some advice, bit if a weird one
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