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For what it's worth, I'm a doctor and I find this story hard to believe. It does sound to me like wishful thinking by an AI hype guy. In my experience, these s

For what it's worth, I'm a doctor and I find this story hard to believe. It does sound to me like wishful thinking by an AI hype guy. In my experience, these sorts of situations happen when two things come together: 1. The patient's family has just enough medical knowledge to fall onto the wrong part of a Dunning-Kruger curve. 2. The family has certain beliefs about the medical establishment. Namely, that medical staff (especially doctors) are trained in medical school to have an inflexible way of thinking and that the doctors are dismissive of the family's proposed treatment because they are married to textbook thinking and rigidly following hospital protocols. #1 happens all the time - maybe even the majority of the time - but it isn't enough to cause conflict on its own. #2 is the special sauce that makes the situation boil over. What is the absolute last thing you want to do given #2? Probably something along the lines of handing every member of the staff a pre-written script to recite every time a family member asks questions. This will make them feel like they are being stonewalled, not like they are being listened to. This will confirm their fears about point #2, not ameliorate them. I can't say I've ever seen someone print off a script quite like this before, but I have seen some doctors piss off patients/families by relying too much on pat phrases or repeatedly pointing to a particular clinical guideline or hospital policy as the rationale for their decision.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> The family has certain beliefs about the medical establishment. Namely, that medical staff (especially doctors) are trained in medical school to have an inflexible way of thinking This belief saved my mother's life. We came with complainst of lung issies, for some reason doctors decided allergies are mosh likely but we wanted an X-ray. Months later they finally did a scan and found lung cancer. I don't know if they are following a flow chart, but when dealing with NHS doctors I sometimes feel like I am talking to a bot. They have the same routines, for exanple they will never ever check for Vitamin D defficiency, etc. I cant imagine what will happen once real bots / chatgpt becomes widespread.c
- Calavar 3y ago
  Well as with most beliefs, sometimes it's wrong and sometimes it's right. I don't know anything about your mother's case, and I don’t personally have any experience with the NHS, so I can't say if it would have been appropriate to get a CT earlier in her case. Maybe it would have been. I do feel that we as doctors can be too rigid in our decision making sometimes, but my thoughts on this are quite nuanced and probably very different from the average layperson's. It's probably also a multi-page writeup, so I won't get into it here. In general though, CT scans cause cancer in about 1 out of every 1000 cases [1], so if we ordered them on everyone who asked, we could very well cause more cancer than we diagnosed. In the US, we already have system that is much more patient driven and much more aggressive on testing than most of western Europe, and we still have worse health outcomes. I agree with your concerns about Chat GPT. Patients want face to face time and I think they deserve that. Unfortunately that's low hanging fruit for C-suite executives to pick at when cutting costs. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2360 https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2360
sukilot 3y ago
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ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> The family has certain beliefs about the medical establishment. Namely, that medical staff (especially doctors) are trained in medical school to have an inflexible way of thinking This belief saved my mother's life. We came with complainst of lung issies, for some reason doctors decided allergies are mosh likely but we wanted an X-ray. Months later they finally did a scan and found lung cancer. I don't know if they are following a flow chart, but when dealing with NHS doctors I sometimes feel like I am talking to a bot. They have the same routines, for exanple they will never ever check for Vitamin D defficiency, etc. I cant imagine what will happen once real bots / chatgpt becomes widespread.c

Calavar 3y ago
Well as with most beliefs, sometimes it's wrong and sometimes it's right. I don't know anything about your mother's case, and I don’t personally have any experience with the NHS, so I can't say if it would have been appropriate to get a CT earlier in her case. Maybe it would have been. I do feel that we as doctors can be too rigid in our decision making sometimes, but my thoughts on this are quite nuanced and probably very different from the average layperson's. It's probably also a multi-page writeup, so I won't get into it here. In general though, CT scans cause cancer in about 1 out of every 1000 cases [1], so if we ordered them on everyone who asked, we could very well cause more cancer than we diagnosed. In the US, we already have system that is much more patient driven and much more aggressive on testing than most of western Europe, and we still have worse health outcomes. I agree with your concerns about Chat GPT. Patients want face to face time and I think they deserve that. Unfortunately that's low hanging fruit for C-suite executives to pick at when cutting costs. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2360 https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2360

sukilot 3y ago

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