What Does Your Doctor Hear

[talon]

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/23/what-does-your-doctor-hear-when-you-talk/?hpt=C2

What Does your doctor hear when you talk?

Not much, and often misses crucial symptoms or gets them wrong.

If doctor visits with my daughter are any sample, the doctor outright lies on the records - in the past 15 years, she's been to 11 doctors for a persistent cough - and every single one of them, including the one 3 months ago, wrote down that her cough was "recent". Really? 15 years of medical history complaining of a persistent cough is "recent"? She complained of hip and knee pain and it took 5 visits and 3 doctors before one noticed one leg was significantly shorter than the other and finally did an X-ray to discover her hip was twisted partly out of the socket. So he sent her for PT - and told the PT she had "back pain" - something she's never complained about. It took 10 years and 8 different doctors before one finally ordered the thyroid tests that proved her thyroid was malfunctioning and start to correct it - except that her next visit, he told "forgot" she was there for a thyroid test and renewal of the prescription, and when she reminded him, he got angry and refused to run the blood test and renew the prescription because she "wasn't a doctor" and he "knew better" and he accused her of being a drug addict. For synthroid? Really?

If it were just one doctor, it would be easy to dismiss it as an aberration, but it's been more than a decade and numerous doctors - with and without insurance - and still not one doctor has listened to her, and not one has remembered - even with her medical records right there in front of them and the nurse's note on why she was seeing him - what her condition was.

If her medical experiences are common, then it doesn't matter what the government does, what laws they enact, or regulations they insist on, medical care will continue to spiral down.

The most important thing a doctor can do is listen to the patient.

If the patient has seen many doctors and not been heard by any of them, then the doctor may have to listen to a lengthy list where the patient tries to describe the same thing in as many different ways as possible in the hopes that one of those descriptions will be in words the doctor understands and will act on. Doctors and patients speak different languages. That's why patients struggle so hard to describe their symptoms and will say the same things over and over hoping the doctor will try to meet them half way - and too many doctors don't. If the patient doesn't use the doctor's very limited and precise vocabulary, the patient is just screwed.