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.

The trouble is that the number of people who can actually understand these things is far smaller than the number of people who actually can.

Again, anyone who thinks medicine, especially generalism, is easy is displaying their own ignorance of the complexity involved.

No, I don't think it's easy. As you can see on the thread, GPs themselves seem to find it too difficult now, don't they. There is appalling practice going on and it's a pity you are more interested in talking up the generic GP than recognising the incompetence and medical neglect being suffered by patients. My own parent was a GP and I'm well aware of how good a good one can be. But there isn't the context for that now, or in many cases the attitude, and much that GPs do can be done by nurses, as evidenced by excellent nurses doing the same job and being paid the same salary in areas where no GP will go. You can't say that about a consultant.

My 'clever friends' are perfectly able to recognise their own limitations and they do. Which is to describe their own appalling ignorance! I'm better placed to evaluate whether they are being self deprecating (they're not!). Hopefully they will improve in time but there really isn't the accountability to force them to.

I would be permanently in a wheelchair or seriously ill in hospital if I had listened to my GP on several occasions. If only that concerned you more than playing the victim.

GlasswareisOverated

As a non medic, I was also in a similar position recently and managed to work out what was going on with a bit of Google scholar. GP merrily prescribed medications such exacerbated the situation and happily professed no knowledge of this possibility. Shut down the conversation when I suggested it. A private consultant listened, agreed, sorted it out and red the riot act to the GP who I would now not trust with my big toe. It's a serious condition but perish the thought they would learn something new. They should really know better and I'm glad you're better.

Read

The trouble is that the number of people who can actually understand these things is far smaller than the number of people who actually can.

Very profound.

😂

Was meant to say ...

The trouble is that the number of people who can actually understand these things is far smaller than the number of people who think they can.

I'll get me coat...

Then there is all of the routine chronic disease monitoring that GPs carry out day to day

Anyone who think GPs are good at 'routine' chronic disease monitoring doesn't have a chronic disease. In my experience, most of them don't actually have a scooby.

Yikes.

You are being very unreasonable.

To think your googling is the equivalent of a medial degree. Wow.

People are all blaming GPs and calling them incompetent... they have x amount of time with patients. (I believe 10 minutes, but may be wrong). A lot of surgeries have a "one problem per appt" policy.

Someone with complex systems can't possibly be diagnosed etc in 10 minutes. Patients with multiple symptoms may not even be allowed to go through them all.

The system is shit.

I was working for an NHS trust and had a meeting, where my head of division was present. She heard my voice and got me seen by their top ENT specialist within three days, who diagnosed me with Vocal Dystonia (vocal muscles not functioning as they should, specifically the one on the left hand side).
I got referred on to another ENT specialist, to have botox injected into the vocal chord.
I then saw a neurologist privately for a separate issue, a tingling sensation in my scalp, related to neck problems I have suffered with since the age of sixteen. The neurologist pointed out that the vocal dystonia was a side effect of the medication I was on treat my bi-polar disorder, the medication was acting as dopamine antagonist, effecting my brains ability to communicate with my left vocal chord. I stopped taking the medication (having considered the pros and cons of staying on the medication and continuing with the botox injections) my voice is over ninety percent recovered now.
I did not figure out the problem on my own but at the same time, it should have not taken six GP appointments and four different consultants (three ENT and one neurologist) to figure out a)what the issue was and b)how it could be resolved effectively.

Almost exactly the same thing happened to me - I’d been seen by an ENT consultant, a consultant neurologist, a voice consultant (who was injecting botox in the muscles, controlling my vocal chords to relieve the symptoms of the vocal dystonia) and a psychiatrist. Not one of them considered that the SSRI, I had been told to take, was causing the vocal dystonia! I’d suffered for three years! I found it out on Google, and stopped taking the SSRI - I got 90% of my voice back, and the voice consultant agreed I no longer met the criteria for botox.

It’s in the BNF, that the SSRI could cause movement disorders! Why is that 3 consultants (and one of them had a whole team of speech and language therapists and junior doctors in attendance - at least 6 of them) and a Mental Health Trust didn’t know that, with all that medical training, the peer reviewed articles, CPD, etc and presumably their own copy of the BNF?

I've lost faith in doctors. My GP surgery used to be great, but over the last 5 years it has gone downhill. The lovely helpful GP's have all either left or retired & we are left with new doctors who aren't caring & just want you in & out as fast as they can, that is if you can get past the pit bull receptionist & avoid the nurse practitioner who if you see you have more chance of winning the Lottery than getting a prescription. I'm under a neurologist who was great when I was paying £200 an appointment but since transferring to the NHS just doesn't seem interested.

.... because you are not the only patient they have got to look after.

Patient numbers per GP have rocketed, as have numbers per consultant.

Ask yourself why so many have left/retired/emigrated?

My DD was 10minutes late for a home visit (after dealing with a particular complex patient) she got a mouthful ... dealt with her and drove away thinking "why do i bother"
She is getting this more and more, less staff means more work, harder to keep appointment times, dickhead patients (my phrase not hers)

@Discovereads

PlasticineMeg
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

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

Erm…just because a GP or any other doctor IS a woman, does not make them an expert on women’s healthcare-you do realise that right? That a female GP may have led their studying and therefore their expertise in the direction that interests them-such as children/skin/heart disease etc etc.

Womans health issues are generally ignored or under treated by GP’s and hospital consultants too. On average it takes 5 years to be diagnosed with endometriosis a common but very painful condition, woman have to put up with being told here take a pain killer, have you tried exercising? etc before they are “allowed” to be referred for scans or get suitable treatment.

Another condition, an autoimmune condition, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis affects more woman than men, 1 man for every 10 woman is affected. Yet Levothyroxine is the ONLY drug prescribed by the NHS, if it doesn’t cure the wide range of life altering symptoms then according to the mainly male medical profession, it’s all in your head.
Woman are then put on anti depressants and told to go away. I cannot imagine this being the treatment pathway for cardiac conditions where a huge variety of medication is available but that’s because it affects mainly men.
Woman seeking help on health forums all share the terrible way they are treated takes years to be diagnosed then under medicated and dismissed.
Many have to resort to buying medication from abroad and self treating to cure symptoms because of this one drug one, dosage, approach of the NHS.

There is huge mysogeny in medicine, which needs addressed and GP’s definitely play their part in this , agree some without realising it, even if it’s a female GP as just two examples of conditions that affect mainly woman are shown not to be treated with the same variety of medication or resources given to conditions which affect mainly men.

Also everyone who is taking the piss out of my use of vascular (I was drunk when I wrote the original post), can you name six types of diabetes without googling?
Because I can and I am not medically trained in anyway.

The problem, OP, is that everytime you have an interaction with a registered healthcare professional that as well as trying to help you and not harm youperson puts their registration on the line. Not just the job they are in now but the ability to work at all in the career they've studied and worked for from their school days.

There is no way of knowing when a patient says 'I've done my research' how good that person is in evaluating the evidence (its not as easy as just reading peer reviewed material - see Andrew Wakefield and the Lancet), do they understand grades of interaction and that some resources provide better information than others around this for various classes of drugs and have they consulted the right one, do they understand risk/benefit profiles, do they understand the side effects and what these mean for their life if they get them, are they at risk of pregnancy? Get any of this wrong and that's the patient harmed and the registration out the window.

I have had one exceptional experience with a GP (however, it was not here). I went in to the GP thinking that I was going insane and not having a clue how to describe what was happening i.e. the symptoms I was experiencing. I tried to explain it by saying something like "I can't sit still without feeling an overwhelming urge to move." 🤔 I was full sure that she was going to get the men in white coats! I was aware that it made me sound like I was a lazy arse and that my mind was telling me to get up off said lazy arse (like the current Smart watches sometimes rudely prompt you to MOVE AROUND!!). I was astounded to discover that what I was experiencing had a name!!

A&E doctors can be awful though also. Well, so can GPs but mainly if you manage to actually meet one in person, they have a vague notion of what speciality to refer you to. One such occasion was when I was brought to Resus by ambulance and even though the journey was probably 5 minutes, it was the longest 5 minutes of my life. My hands were spasming so to speak, and folding inwards to my elbows if you get me. My neck and jaw were also clenching and I couldn't talk as couldn't move mouth/jaw etc. I was so fucking panicked as I felt like the clenching/spasming was spreading to my chest and that I very soon wouldn't be able to breathe. I actually don't recall why I had called 111 or 999 but the spasming thing only happened after I had to walk downstairs to ambulance which was maybe parked 20 metres up a slight hill. In any case I was given something (no idea what) and after of hours I was brought to Majors from Resus. A doctor came a little while later and told me that I could go home. I was like 'are you kidding me? I can't even get off this trolley, let alone make my way home! I have a history of one electrolyte being low (they still don't know why) but it's not one that is routinely tested for in the full blood count they do in A&E. I the

Sorry, website is crashing so posted before I lost it. Ye, so I just happened to ask the doc who was sending me home what that electrolyte value was. He then must have asked for that to be tested and 20 minutes later a nurse came with an IV bag of said electrolyte. The value was 0.2. Normal range is 0.7 (ish) to 1.0. Had I done what he had told me to do and gone home, I would very likely have died.

I'll let ye guess what the conditions were. And that is why patients could never simply refer themselves to consultants. Not even trained doctors know what the hell is wrong half the time, let alone my good self!

And they still can't figure out (going on for years now) why that electrolyte is almost always low. 🤔

That ^^
I manage my own mostly, and through my consultants. I'm lucky if my doctors remember I have one chronic disease let alone the rest
I've had a letter from 2 consultants asking for me to be referred as I have hashimotos, they've refused twice

My consultant saw what I had been prescribed for a UTI, said "that won't work" and couriered me antibiotics and told me in future to ask him

I haven't read every post, so apologies if someone has already made this point, but actually I find the new tendency to consult patients on their care can be less than helpful at times. When DH broke his collarbone a couple of years ago we both found it really difficult that the doctors kept saying "what treatment would you like?" We would much rather they had made a clear recommendation for their position of much greater knowledge!

@Bramshott My GP practice now works mainly with e-consults. One of the questions you're asked is 'Is there any particular treatment you would like'. Lol! Yes, I'd like a foot massage please! Like what the fuck?!

Well that is when the stupid e-consult doesn't stop you proceeding with big red font 'CALL 999 IMMEDIATELY!'. So you either have to do that, or go back and change your answers. I spent a week to and fro to A&E with a combination of symptoms. GP kept telling me to go to A&E and A&E doctors kept sending me home and telling me to go to the GP. In the heel of the hunt I ended up with sepsis.

I agree with OP. Obviously not all people are intelligent enough, so need help. The people skills now required that many GP's (and others) don't have, is to know the difference.

I often know more about my health than they do : my diabetes, my frozen shoulder that type 1's are more prone to and should have had surgery 3 years ago instead of being fobbed off with physio, says surgeon; or HRT, than a GP. because they are generalists.

I read up on HRT. Extensively, after being fobbed off and denied for years. One GP gave me wrong info, I corrected her re the NICE guidelines from 2015, so 7 years ago. She admitted that she now realised most of her female patients, 100's could be on the higher dosage. The ignorance, nigh on negligence is shocking. I only got where I got, the correct disagree, through politely fighting.

Some patients know nothing, and need a GP's help. Many of us have already investigated and need kindness and a referral.

I think if you go to a doctor with this kind of antagonistic attitude you’re setting yourself up for an unproductive relationship.

I have one illness (well a few actually but this one in particular is apparently the culprit for all manner of things 🙄) and honestly, if I had a pain in my arse, it would be attributed to that condition. It's infuriating! As my friend (a consultant) said to me recently while I was having a rant that as per usual this condition was the one blamed for whatever symptoms I was having (upper abdo pain), "they're like grasshoppers - jumping to conclusions!"