In my opinion, the field of medicine has a very high rate of occupational incompetence.

Gotta be hard to be a doc. Person after person coming into your office heavily overweight, alcoholism, drugs, smokers, all looking for solutions to problems their own behaviors have created. Most people won't take responsibility, don't want to hear the hard truth, so docs now just shovel pills at them because actually changing your lifestyle isn't what the patient wants to hear, and maybe the pills have a fighting chance of helping, or not, who knows.

There are bad examples of every profession. You have bad lawyers, bad engineers, bad accountants, and bad doctors.

I think the problem with doctors is people take what many say as gospel instead of looking for additional opinions. If you don't think your doctor is doing a good job for get another opinion, preferably at a totally different institution.

It is also important to seek out doctors that share you philosophy about health. There are different schools of thought around health and you want your values to align with your doctor.

Agree.

A bigger problem exists where insured patients pay a lot for their care and have these incredible expectations. You cant fix 20 years of drinking 2L of soda a day in 20 minutes of consultation? Shame on you doc should have trained in a good hospital let me talk to a lawyer.

It then turns into that they feel they are doing docs a favor by showing up to their appointments!

dr dr wrote:

I have mixed feelings about them. I'm having an operation soon, and the surgeon forgot basically half of why I was getting the surgery between visits. Had I not reminded him of what happened in our first meeting, which he admitted to taking notes on, I'm not sure that the procedure would have even been worth it. I've had another procedure in the past go against its intention.

If you made the same sense with him as with that post, I can see why he would be mystified.

I went to the doctor a my twenties. And he put me on a medication that I didn't really need he actually wanted to put me on two at a time two different medications but I just decided on one the one medication I was on never worked then when I came back later to tell him he wanted to put me on a whole new medication his reasoning behind it was that he has been in the medical field for 30 years and knew what he was doing I feel like there could have been a more natural way to do what he wanted to do with medication but he didn't even Explore that pass at all

Physicians, like any person, have an innate desire to do “something” to fix the problem. Due to the way our medical system is structured, that “something” is often just prescribing a medication that has been shown to have marginal benefit in preventing mortality at a population level. When the patient shows up at enough appointments, they wind up with a laundry list of medications.

This isn’t all the fault of physicians - our society has a weird view of health, life, and death. Patients have expectations. I started moonlighting in a walk-in clinic while I was completing a fellowship year and my own practice suffered over time. Initially I would spend time talking to patients about why doing “nothing” for their inevitable self-resolving viral infection was the safest option. I would say 20% internalized and agreed with what I was saying, 60% stared blankly and said “so I’m not getting antibiotics?”, and 20% got angry with me. My threshold for giving antibiotics got lower as the year went on because it became easier and made me more money (as I could see more people). I was meeting people’s expectations. Was it as good medicine? Definitely not.

I now work in geriatrics and constantly run into patients on 20+ medications and families who haven’t considered the fact that life is finite and we all need to die of something. These medications cause many side effects for marginal mortality benefits. Most patients care more about symptom control and functional status than longevity, anyways.

fine by me wrote:

You are certainly right. I could give my whole sphiel on how I came to the same conclusion but don’t need to. Most doctors are not worth trusting or going to. It’s best to live as healthy as possible so they can’t be given an opportunity to screw you up regarding both health and finances.

Please identify yourself and express these thoughts upon arrival with a ruptured aneurysm, broken arm, or bad appendix. It’ll save your surgeon and OR crew a ton of sleep.

dustydave wrote:

I went to the doctor a my twenties. And he put me on a medication that I didn't really need he actually wanted to put me on two at a time two different medications but I just decided on one the one medication I was on never worked then when I came back later to tell him he wanted to put me on a whole new medication his reasoning behind it was that he has been in the medical field for 30 years and knew what he was doing I feel like there could have been a more natural way to do what he wanted to do with medication but he didn't even Explore that pass at all

Wow, use a period some time.

I tore my quadriceps tendon 10 weeks ago. A nasty injury -- hopefully no one else has to go through it. At the time, I wasn't sure what happened. Thought it was a bad quad strain. I could still walk, albeit with a nasty limp.

My insurance requires me to go to a GP and get a referral. I called my normal doc, he had retired. Oops. Booked the next available appointment with someone else.

So I get there and the hospital is a maze of entrances, doors, elevators and sorts of BS. I finally found the right place. Mind you -- I wandered through there for 20 minutes on a torn quad tendon. Hadn't been diagnosed, didn't have a brace or crutches yet.

So they force me to fill out reams of paperwork because I was a "new patient". Apparently I was new because the old doc had retired.

They take my blood pressure, which is high, because I'm in pain and pissed off.

Finally get to see the doc and all she wants to talk about is my high blood pressure. I'm like, doc, I'm here because I hurt my knee. Can you look at it? She hasn't a clue what could be wrong with my knee. Writes the referral (THANK YOU). Wants to talk to me more about blood pressure meds. I threw the prescription away. I'll never go back. Just unbelievable to me that someone is sitting in the office with a major injury and they want to talk about my blood pressure. Maybe I should have gone to the ER. But I'm an old school masochist who thinks that is only for people who are dying.

Timmy Treadwell wrote:

Finally get to see the doc and all she wants to talk about is my high blood pressure. I'm like, doc, I'm here because I hurt my knee. Can you look at it? She hasn't a clue what could be wrong with my knee. Writes the referral (THANK YOU). Wants to talk to me more about blood pressure meds. I threw the prescription away. I'll never go back. Just unbelievable to me that someone is sitting in the office with a major injury and they want to talk about my blood pressure.

Last time I went to a doc for a musculoskeletal issue, he had no clue about what was ailing me but was just desperate to get me to have a colonoscopy. (Zero symptoms, lean and athletic all my life, high-fiber low-fat diet, BMI of 19.3). I did consent to the noninvasive stool test, though.

I'm Indian and in my opinion, many dumb opportunistic Asians(including Indians) become doctors. They'll hate all their science and math classes and be bad at them, have no passion for learning, but care about making money. It truly is sad.

There are definitely incompetent doctors, and even more incompetent nurse practicioners and physician assistants, who are likely the people you end up seeing when you go to the clinic for routine stuff. I have two close family members who are primary care physicians and they confirm what others in this thread have said. The vast majority of their patients come in because they have some variant of obesity/diabetes/lifestyle-related chronic disease PLUS anxiety/depression. Many of them want opioids for the pain they find themselves in day after day. So the doctor has to be the bad guy saying no, you can't have oxycontin for your bum knee that is a direct result of you being 300 pounds and never exercising. Speaking of which, have you considered losing some weight? Maybe quitting smoking and/or cutting back on the soda? These are non-starters for many people. So they end up leaving with a prescription for Prozac or something, a recommendation to go to therapy (which they won't do), and then they'll complain that the doctor was incompetent because they didn't get what they want (which is fun opioid drugs and some validation of their sh!tty lifestyle).

I've had pretty good luck with doctors. Mine have all been super-competent dermatologists and surgeons. I wouldn't put a lot of hope into a doctor to fix biomechanic or psychological issues.

As far as the overall population goes, you can pretty accurately rank their competence and mental accuity:

Engineers from a top US university.

Physicians

Veterinarians

Chemists

Physicists

Biologists

Any other scientist

.

.

.

Carpenter

Mechanic

Psychologist

Nurse

Landscaper

Humanities major

Baker/Chef

.

.

.

Progressive politician

.

.

.

Car Salesman

.

.

.

Banker

Preacher

Cop

Republican politician

Donuts are free wrote:

There is a shockingly high percentage of doctors who are scandalously bad at their jobs.

I've noticed the same thing. I've also personally known several people who went on to become MDs who were definitely not what I would consider "smart." They were, however, extremely dedicated students. I'm not sure how much that really helps you if your reasoning skills are shet though.

Medicine interests me greatly but I will not even try to go into the field because I know I am not intellectually gifted and only intellectually gifted people actually belong in the field.

YMMV wrote:

dr dr wrote:

I have mixed feelings about them. I'm having an operation soon, and the surgeon forgot basically half of why I was getting the surgery between visits. Had I not reminded him of what happened in our first meeting, which he admitted to taking notes on, I'm not sure that the procedure would have even been worth it. I've had another procedure in the past go against its intention.

If you made the same sense with him as with that post, I can see why he would be mystified.

I normally don't tell doctors how to do their job.

I've met a lot of Europeans who are insecure about their English. It's ok!