To think doctors, specifically GP's need to change their approach to patients

[GlasswareisOverated]

We live in the technological age. We have access to information at our fingertips, that someone fifty years ago, hell even twenty years ago would not have been able to comprehend.
Am I being unreasonable to think that drs need to lose the 'we know best about everything medical' attitude.

Obviously I won't be performing brain surgery any time soon or stripping legs of vascular veins to be used in cardiac surgery but I can read a laboratory report and understand what it means and I can get the gist of most medical studies.

"Half of what you are taught in medical school will be wrong in 10 years’ time. The trouble is, none of your teachers know which half"
Former dean of Harvard medical school, Sydney Burwell.

Have you met the average member of the public?

Have you seen the inane and obvious questions which get posted on this forum alone?

"What's the weather like in X?"

"My leg is falling off, should I see a doctor?"

"I have a burn, should I put toothpaste on it?"

Do you think these people are capable of medical diagnostics?

YABU
Doctors don’t stop training and learning as soon as they leave medical school. There is a continuous learning requirement where they have to stay up to date in their area(s) of practice.

You seem to be generalising about all doctors, presumably from your experience of a few with what you regard as a patronising attitude.
Your doctor does know more than you about medicine, anatomy, pharmacology, biochemistry, pathology, physiology, etc etc, by dint of having studied them for professional exams, whereas you haven’t. Unless you think reading a few internet articles is equivalent to five years of medical school, two years as a junior doctor and up to ten years of specialist training plus postgraduate exams, followed by cpd updates?

I’m a retired doctor and tried to tailor my explanations to patients at the level they could understand. You must realise that my
patients ranged from non verbal severe special needs up to retired professors of medicine - quite a range! Patients are also often stressed and anxious, and can’t take in complex information, so need it simplified.

i'm a professor & quite capable of accessing & reading any number of medical papers if I need to. But actually, I would rather not. I want a doctor to tell me what the standard NHS treatment is for a condition and I (mostly) trust them to get it right. To read the full medical literature properly would take me a very very long time and I could still misinterpret things.

Of course there are cases where a patient has an unusual condition and will become an expert in that condition. But for most things, I do not want the responsibility of having to decide on things I really don't know enough about.

but I can read a laboratory report and understand what it means and I can get the gist of most medical studies.

Bully for you, but lots of people can’t do this and would be posting on Mumsnet and Facebook asking random people to tell them what their report meant.

there are more than 50k GPs in the UK - how many of them have you interacted with in order to be assured that they all behave the same way and have the same attitudes?
My GP is fine thanks.
What job do you do, and would you be a bit hacked off that if I assumed that you are a carbon copy of every single person employed to do the same job?

The doctors / specialists I have had appointments with most recently have been respectful of my views. I think things maybe are changing.

Im on the fence.

I think it must be so annoying to be a GP and have patients come in clutching pages from Google thinking they can diagnose themselves.

but in particular women are never listened to in the way they should be, there’s a huge gap in womens healthcare and it needs to stop

I think GPs do this more now though, if you've done research they seem to listen and do what you want eg prescribe specific medications, refer for tests. The tricky thing nowadays is getting an appointment in the first place. Also I've requested copies of my blood test results, not sure why patients don't automatically get a copy (I suppose it could lead to a lot of time wasting with queries).

Marvellous the OP has solved the workforce crisis for the NHS... We will just leave a load of ipads in the waiting room and the patients can get on with it themselves.. Meanwhile us pesky up ourselves doctors can go and have a cup of tea

The best doctors listen to their patients. These doctors know that a parent knows their own child better than anyone else. They also know that patients know about their own bodies. Anyone with a chronic illness soon becomes an “expert patient”. If your GP doesn’t listen, then it’s prudent to change doctors.

I have a medical background and I find my GP is very respectful of this and never speaks to me like I wouldn't understand something. That said, she's the GP and while she will listen to what I think, I'm not always right nor do I know the nitty gritty of NHS related things and how medicine works 'in practice' as opposed to theory.

Well 56% of U.K. GPs ARE women, so really not seeing how there could be a huge gap in womens healthcare by GPs.

I agree with @dollymuchymuchness . In fact, I'd go one step further and suggest that patients with a long-term chronic illness almost certainly know as much as most GPs about their condition in terms of how it affects them. Maybe not the exact science, but definitely what does and does not work for them.

Specialist consultants might well be able to offer greater insights, and will know more about current thinking and up-to-date research in the field, but common-or-garden GPs? Nah.

My GP is great, speaks to me like I am capable of understanding things and talks through all the options when it comes to prescribing. That said I was given some blood test results by email recently, had no clue what the readings actually meant and couldn't seem to access an explanation.

YANBU. The surgeon who took out my gallbladder had a mug which said 'Don't confuse your Google search with my medical degree', which was funny and fair enough. However, I doubt my gp knew more about gallstones than I did after I'd done quite a lot of Googling. I wonder how much training the average gp has specifically on gallstones. Isn't it well-known they have one day on the menopause, which affects literally half the population?

People talk dismissively about Googling symptoms as though the only info available is crackpot websites and random people on forums with weird theories about their symptoms- rather than the NHS website and worldwide equivalents, plus umpteen reviewed medical articles. I've had gps just print out a page from the NHS website and hand it to me!

I know what you mean. Common ailments are a lot easier to diagnose because of the Internet BUT so many human errors, miscommunication come up and so many skim to the rare outcomes, that wouldn't have before i can understandwhy doctors aee wary.

It can work against you too. I had gallstones, a nurse said I had that, it came up very frequently when I googled imy symptoms (16 years ago). But the doctor was adamant that the nurse was wrong. It was 9 months later before that doctor said he'd try an ultrasound to look at my gallbladder but not to hold out any hope.

When I had my gallbladder removed, it took 8 months for them to diagnose. I went through screenings for hepatitis and all sorts. They never would look at gallstones because I'm less then 8st and slim. I kept asking them to just check as I looked up my symptoms. Then one day, I had a trainee and he just said, sounds like gallstones. He scanned me then next day and he was correct. The symptoms I had where bizarre. I couldn't drive as I was so tired and dizzy. Couldn't eat anything and couldn't even speak properly. My legs and arms where covered in bruises from my itchy skin and I was jaundice really badly. I lost so much weight and it's affected my liver too, so now I'm on medication possibly life long if it doesn't improve. Totally agree that there is not enough information on it.

Yes, a patient may well know an awful lot about their one condition and how it affects them, and which treatments they'd like to try.

I'm not sure what point you're making though? As doctors, we need to know quite a lot about every condition, and an awful lot about whatever our specialty is. I'm not sure how you think it compares?

I read so much that most doctors I see ask me if I'm a medic. This doesn't mean I can diagnose myself or recommend treatment. I just have above-average comprehension skills.

I agree with others saying that being able to access medical information is not the same as being able to interpret it, so technology doesn't make as much difference as all that.

I do think doctors sometimes get it very wrong, and the old-fashioned 'doctor's word is law and cannot be questioned' is a bad thing. We only need the Ockenden report to show that. But ... I really do think that's also about bad doctors. A good doctor will listen anyway. It's always been like that. The examples where a doctor or a group of medical practitioners haven't listened, are examples of the system not working as it should.

I don't think we ought to move towards patients getting more of a say, or more authority. While many people could read a lab report etc., many of those people would not know the limits of their knowledge - they would have a false sense of awareness. And medics might have a false sense of their awareness too. This can be extremely dangerous, as I know first hand. I won't tell the details as they're outing, but when my DD was born and was sick, the nurse had a quick conversation with my DP and established she worked in biomedical science, so presumed she would understand something that was obvious to her as a nurse. DP had no idea, neither did I, and as a result we were given responsibility to repeatedly do something that could have killed DD. We had no idea of the limits of our knowledge. We should not have been put in that position.

Am I being unreasonable to think that drs need to lose the 'we know best about everything medical' attitude

I've never met a dr with that attitude.🤷🏻‍♀️. I'm sure they exist but I've not come across any. Drs training goes on forever. 5 years at uni, 2 years as F1 and F2 then years more training and lots more exams before they get to be consultants. Humans are complex systems and understanding how it all works together isn't something you can have a quick google about.
I can't believe people believe that drs only spend one day learning about the menopause. It sounds like some people haven't a clue about the training Drs go through.

Have you met the public?

in 2015, the OECD conducted its Survey of Adult Skills, known as PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). This survey found that 16.4% (or 1 in 6) of adults in England, and 17.9% (or 1 in 5) adults in Northern Ireland, have literacy levels at or below Level 1, which is considered to be 'very poor literacy.

Not convinced encouraging the public to not listen to their GPs and that their own research is as valid as a medical degree is a great idea.

Half the public are stupider than average.

Yup. YABU

Your arrogance is truly breathtaking!