“I’m Not a Doctor, but I’ll Take a Look at It.”
Posted: Saturday, April 17, 2010
by Jon Searles
Medicine is science but science is not always right. With that in mind, because science is filled with contradictions, unusual outcomes, and mistakes it is reasonable to assume that doctors and those that practice medicine will also be filled with the same problems found in most sciences. After all, why would they call it "practice" if it was actually an exact science?
Several instances involving close friends and family members have involved mistakes made by medical professionals. These mistakes have resulted in hospital admission for both a close friend and recently my mother. My partner in business underwent a medical procedure and his wife wisely questioned whether he should stay on his blood thinner Plavics. After the doctors involved didn't quite answer the question it was like a scene from the television show House which involved emergency admission to the hospital because of excessive bleeding that could have resulted in death. When a patient has to have platelets and whole blood in a transfusion, something went terribly wrong, or at least that what I learned from www.wedmd.com. Then, just last week my mother was prescribed a medication for her heart which is also a diuretic. A diuretic is "any drug that elevates the rate of urination and thus provides a means of forced diuresis ." I got that from www.en.wikipedia.org since again I needed to pull upon my vast medical knowledge to make sure I knew what I was talking about. Two different care nurses told my mother that since her increase in urination could dehydrate her she needed to drink a lot of water. Unfortunately, the increase in water washed the sodium from her bottom and she was taken by ambulance to the hospital because of severe electrolyte imbalance. You may think that maybe they did not know what would happen, but my wife knew the answer before I even told her! She cares for the elderly, and those on diuretics traditionally take sodium pills with it. Why do you think the doctor or the two nurses did not know that? Shouldn't someone be taking notes and sharing this information?
Couple these instances with my father showing up for a surgery that was scheduled early one Monday morning just to be sent home because doctor's office A did not call surgery office B and tell them he was coming. I told him he was lucky to get out without a mistaken hysterectomy.
Doctors at one time were revered and thought of as superhuman. Nurses were the selfless, unflinching care givers who knew exactly what to do and when. Unfortunately, the pedestals that we put these men and women on have become tarnished. The reasons for our new understanding involves, in my humble opinion as a non-medical professional:
1) Many doctors and nurses are overworked just to make ends meet financially and are unable to give each patient the attention they deserve. Many also do not CARE as it goes as much of they learn to just tolerate patients.
2) Too much information in our world has allowed people to compare and contrast care throughout the country. This makes those who do a great job look better and those doing a marginal job look as though they are incompetent boobs. The on line sites, good and bad, also have given way to a wide assortment of information overload.
3) Medical science is evolving too quickly for any person to actually keep up with. Robotic surgery, better techniques, advanced procedures, and an overabundance of life saving drugs are making medicine reach new heights.
4) Medicine has entered the ring for the capitalistic consumer. We can request to have things enlarged, bypassed, tucked, stinted, and scoped. We get to compare the commercials for the best drugs. We can swing into a 24 hour clinic for a quick bag of electrolytes or prescription and be out in 30 minutes or less, possibly with an oil change. Just the advertisements for pharmaceuticals on our televisions are enough to drive people crazy and we all know to seek medical attention for anything lasting over four hours.
Toss in overworked, financially strapped, tired, and disenchanted medical professionals, malpractice attorneys chasing the blinking lights of ambulances, and super bugs becoming resistant to all antibiotics and you have a boiling steam kettle preparing to explode. This doesn't even begin to cover the healthcare system which our President and Congress are in the midst of overhauling. It is kind of like trying to change the tires on a speeding Toyota without requiring it to actually stop to loosen the lug nuts and even if you wanted to stop there is a good chance you would not be able to.
So what can be done about it? I am not sure, but I need to cut this article short. There is a Discovery Channel show coming on called about Life in the ER and later I get to see House reruns as he makes 6-8 medical decision blunders that almost kill his patient before he actually diagnoses the ailment by accident in a moment of retrospect or serendipitous happenstance that has nothing to do with his patients condition. Wow, I love when shows are just like real life!
Oh, by the way, I named my article before I actually knew you could buy "I'm not a doctor but I'll take a look" t-shirts on the internet. If you know who should be given credit for the quote which titles this writing please let me know so I can share it with all.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)I enjoyed your article Jon and could relate. My husband and I always say if we had a dollar for every time we heard Doctors say, "I've never seen this before," we’d be rich. We’ve experienced a ‘misdiagnosis’ several times, but have also experienced excellent care from, as you described them, overworked medical professionals. Sometimes we just have to put ourselves in their hands and hope they know what they’re doing.
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Good article topic to ponder--thanks.Please log in to respond to this comment.
I feel your pain on this one - I went in to the ER with a broken rib and was sent home after they X-Ray'd the wrong side and wouldn't take part in listening to my concern! Of course the phone call the next day to relate they 'forgot' to tell me I had pneumnia was great also!On the other hand, there are many great doctors that do care, so I'll stop the whining now! Thanks for listeningPlease log in to respond to this comment.
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