3 ms·
Be academic all you like. However, I live in the real world, with real patients. I live in a world where I can tell a patient that a mole is completely benign a
by jazoom 7y ago
Be academic all you like. However, I live in the real world, with real patients. I live in a world where I can tell a patient that a mole is completely benign and it still makes them anxious and they want me to cut it out.
Some people are anxious types. Few people can comprehend medical statistics. Even an intelligent person such as yourself doesn't seem to comprehend the danger that can come from a "check up".
After you've diagnosed thousands of patients and discovered hundreds of incidentalomas, perhaps then you can tell me how simple this is.
- rmtech 7y ago> However, I live in the real world, with real patients. I live in a world where I can tell a patient that a mole is completely benign and it still makes them anxious and they want me to cut it out. What I am saying is that things need to change, not that this is a trivially fixable problem. Exactly how you would change things is not obvious to me, but I would say that not doing tests because of the information hazard issue is a symptom that something is wrong. Perhaps the more general version of this problem is "don't set up systems that give billions of people nonconstructive negative feedback". It's applicable beyond medicine, I would point at unrealistic celebrity beauty ideals as another manifestation.
- jazoom 7y ago> but I would say that not doing tests because of the information hazard issue is a symptom that something is wrong I agree with that. Unfortunately, what is wrong is probably something to do with human nature, and a system might not be able to fix that.
- rmtech 7y ago> what is wrong is probably something to do with human nature, and a system might not be able to fix that. haha maybe. But there is usually a trend towards things having interfaces that are more human-friendly, so maybe one day healthcare will adapt.