Me thinks they will be apologizing with a check. A very large check.
Doctors get really bugged when you know more about your condition than they do. Because, you know, they’re so much smarter than the rest of us.
So, they didn’t run tests in light of her history and reported symptoms? I mean, who cares that she used Google to check her symptoms? I don’t think that should have even been a consideration.
Is it British Healthcare we are talking about here?
British and Canadian universal healthcare were uses as standard for ‘advanced’ countries. You never hear this kind of stuff during Obamacare debate. Lots of horror stories ignored.
Google malpractice settlements for idiots.
Too many Doctors have this attitude.
I saw a doctor totally ignore a nurses comments during my wife’s pregnancy, and it turns out she was 100% correct.
But HE was not about to let A LOWLY NURSE diagnose anything...
I called him aside afterwards and asked him when he stopped learning. She was right, and he ignored her POINTEDLY, even when it became obvious she was right... I was pissed, he knew he was wrong, and I hope he learned something.
Many years ago I recall a smartass doctor snorting and making some derisive remark about my having found health info on the internet. I calmly replied something like “Yes, those kook sites like JohnsHopkinsMedicalSchool.com probably should be avoided.” That sat him back and shut him up.
There are three essential rules for when you or someone you love has cancer.
1) Procrastination is forbidden. Even if the victim is having an emotional crisis and more than anything else they do not want to believe they have cancer, they have cancer, and if they do not act, act a lot, and keep acting, they will die.
2) This rule applies doubly to doctors. There are far too many doctors who will say, “You have cancer. You should make an appointment to see me again in two months.” For what? To see if they still have cancer? Because it is more challenging for them to work on a more serious cancer?
3) Congratulations, you have a new, full time job. You might need to relocate to a cancer treatment hub and live in an efficiency apartment to get your cancer fixed. Your family will forgive you. If there is an established, effective treatment for your particular kind of cancer, get it first. Only if it doesn’t work should you guinea pig it with experimental treatments. And make sure you know the “windows” (cancer stages) for different experimental therapies.
Tragic, but here’s the reality of the situation.
I had a patient about ten years back, first time I’d ever seen her on my panel. She came in to clinic on a Monday morning with a double handful of lab results and emergency department notes.
She and her husband (also with her) spent most of the day before in the ER for a headache.
Her medical history included: migraine (I COULD stop right there, but for those of you with medical backgrounds you’ll appreciate the rest more than most lay people will), asthma, allergies (just about everything), chronic sinusitis, irritable bowel, anxiety disorder and, if the aforementioned weren’t enough, fibromyalgia.
ER treated her migraine.
So why was I seeing her - with her attentive spouse?
Well, on page 12 or so, right there, highlighted in fluorescent yellow with a lab value. Her calcium level was - if I recall correctly - 10.3.
Normal lab values, right there on the page, were something like 9.5 to 10.2.
So her concern was? She looked it up on the internet. High calcium levels can mean ovarian cancer.
I admit, I laughed a little. “Internet”?
I didn’t go into the statistical problems (fake positives, negatives, standard variations) in looking at a single lab value out of the dozens run at her ER visit, something we in medicine deal with on a daily basis, one of the main reasons it’s foolish for non-medical people to order their own labs online and attempt to make sense of them.
Then I reviewed her medication list, asked her to NOT take the calcium tablet for a day or two and repeat the test.
Outcome? Normal. The test, not the patient.
The patient and her spouse went on to file a complaint with my parent organization - I was “arrogant,” “acting like God” “I disregarded the patient’s concerns,” and more. Folie au dieux. Or tre, as the patient representative got sucked into this too.
Sure, I was guilty as charged. I “disregarded” the patient’s concerns because they were bullish*t.
Had the patient had four years of undergraduate premedical education, four years of medical school, four years of residency in family or internal medicine and 10 years of actual practice, I might have taken her concern more seriously.
But I wasn’t the only one, it turned out, as this particular patient had made a habit of complaints and alienating the medical staff, I was just the next in line.
But this case? This girl with PRIOR cancer? You take it as seriously as you can no matter the source of concern, order the tests, run the ultrasound, whatever it takes. Someone screwed up big time.