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With a strong emphasis on "occasionally". The vast majority of doctors and hospitals (the overwhelming majority) are good and medicine is too complex for most
by robomartin 4y ago
With a strong emphasis on "occasionally". The vast majority of doctors and hospitals (the overwhelming majority) are good and medicine is too complex for most people to understand. I see how hard my wife works to keep up with the latest medicines, research, treatments and developments in her field. It's on part with what any top-level hardware or software engineer has to do on a daily basis to be informed and remain relevant. The exception is: We don't generally kill people if we make a mistake.
In other words, yes, being informed is good. Everyone should dig as deep as their education allows them to when it comes to their own medical needs. However, at the end of the day, it is impossible (and unwise) to pretend that this can substitute for a real doctor. We are talking about good doctors here, not the few at the bottom of the barrel who would have better-served society by choosing a different career.
- maxbond 4y agoI don't think "good doctors" and "bad doctors" is really a good framing. I think the medical system sabotages the relationship between doctor and patient and creates incentives to spend the least amount of effort on any given patient. That isn't anyone's fault but if your diagnosis is off the beaten path, and especially if it looks like a common diagnosis but isn't that one, it can be incredibly difficult to get a doctor to take you seriously. I think people reacted strongly to your comment because they felt it was emblematic of a dismissive attitude they receive from doctors - regardless of how good a doctor may be. To help illustrate, here's a skit where a doctor satirizes this attitude: https://youtube.com/shorts/u_-a7pvFpsA https://youtube.com/shorts/u_-a7pvFpsA
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]