Doctors are the single most ineffective profession in the modern world

Lol you have clearly not dealt with enough lawyers.

I agree with parts of this post. The number of times I went to an athletic trainer or physical therapist and they diagnosed pain in my knee, foot, calf, ankle being caused by weak hips and gave me a bunch of generic exercises to do is too much to count. I've had athletic trainers telling me that I should stretch for 20 minutes 3 times a day!

Physical therapists go through all this school to get their PHD and then they just hand out generic exercises and watch me do them?!? Most of the people on here could give me the same exercises but they don't need to be paid $70 an hour. Never going to a physical therapist for a running-related injury ever again.

medicine is broken wrote:

You hire a lawyer, he gets you the best outcome possible.

So if a plaintiff and a defendant in a lawsuit both hire lawyers, the opposing lawyers will both get the best possible outcome for their client? This doesn't really seem possible.

Please make this known to your heart or vascular surgeon in your preoperative evaluation.

Have you followed any news about the presidency?

I won't dismiss everything you said, but comparing firefighting and lawnmowing (or even accounting) to practicing medicine isn't a good comparison. Practicing medicine well is orders of magnitude more difficult and requires years of training just to reach a minimal level of competency.

The fact that doctors can and do make mistakes often says more about the difficulty of the profession that the quality of the people who practice it.

The philosophy is much like the mechanic, they "fix" something that is neglected or broken. "Fixing" is a bandaid approach and you will see them the next time it needs attention. It's sick care, not health care. It is up to the individual, however, to take measures in order to not neglect themselves and end up in the doctor office.

Yes - the human body - including the psyche - is as simple as a machine... Do cars go to college and learn to repair themselves?

For the most part, doctors are not encouraged to tell the patient to STFU, exercise, eat well, and get back to work. In reality, that is the remedy for a good portion of our ailments.

Also: “You drank heavily for 30 years, and now it is my fault your health treatment plans are failing.” Yes. I see now.

You failed to list air force bomber crews, all air forces. Ignore the hype from C.I.A. videos from 1991 Gulf War and 2003-2009 Iraq War. Vast majority of air force bombs do not accurately go down a chimney as planned. Air force bomber crews usually want a pat on the back for dropping their bombs on correct area code or correct zip code.

Free_the_thigh wrote:

Lol you have clearly not dealt with enough lawyers.

Lawyers are super effective at what they aim for. No one can rack up billable hours like they can.

But yes Dr's are not very good in many cases. Some of the studies they've done are shocking. How they found just creating a chart to tell Dr's what to do when a person has chest pain was far more accurate than letting the Dr's determine if it was a cardiac issue and how to treat it clinically.

Another good one is they gave Dr's who interpret mammograms 100 images and asked them to diagnose whether the patient had cancer. It was actually only 50 unique images and each image was given twice in a random order within the stack of 100. The Dr's diagnosed the identical pictures differently something like 50% of the time. Can't remember the exact figure but it was alarming how often the same Dr diagnosed the same image differently.

Have you been in a classroom lately?

All of my personal physicians so far I would defend their training and attitude in a second. My pediatrician saved me from heart disease, the next one in my early adult stage stopped a severe pollen allergy from suffocating me. The third during my middle age helped me get through severe depression. Last year excellent surgeons did a good job on removing a large kidney stone and skin cancers. And recently my most recent ones complemented me on being so fit and healthy and to keep it up. Also a well trained PT fixed a badly torn hamstring without surgery so they all get big kudos from me. Most Dr.s deserve respect for their contributions to society.

They actually made a tv show about how bad doctors are at their jobs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(TV_series)

It's almost as if the human body is more complex than a car

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Another good one is they gave Dr's who interpret mammograms 100 images and asked them to diagnose whether the patient had cancer. It was actually only 50 unique images and each image was given twice in a random order within the stack of 100. The Dr's diagnosed the identical pictures differently something like 50% of the time. Can't remember the exact figure but it was alarming how often the same Dr diagnosed the same image differently.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that mammograms are meant to be a screening tool rather than a diagnostic tool. The question to ask someone who is looking at a mammogram, then, isn't "does this person have cancer?", but "is this image sufficiently suspicious to send the patient for biopsy?" If someone guessed that a mass wasn't cancer, but still would have sent the patient for biopsy, then we can assume that they would have given the proper care if the mass was actually malignant, right?

Also, diagnosis isn't usually made by imaging alone, right? It's just one piece of information that is considered along with history and physical, correct? So in the setting of diagnosis of an actual patient, the physician would be able to ask the patient if they'd noticed a mass, how long the mass had been there, whether the mass changed in size or quality in relation to menstrual cycle, etc, and they'd be able to palpate the thing to see if it was firm or soft, fixed or mobile, etc. They' would also have a complete history and know the patient's risk factors.

Just kind of seems like you're telling us something that is supposed to sound shocking and appalling even though it is really pretty easily explainable and probably doesn't really translate to real world medical practice.

It kind of seems like you are

Can't remember the exact study off the top of my head. So it is very possible I got the facts around it incorrect. As a Male in my 30s admittedly I don't think about that topic a lot. I'll try and find the study because I thought it was pretty relevant. The Dr. Diagnosis of heart attacks one is very real and some hospitals greatly increased their accuracy by taking the diagnosis out of Dr's hands and having them follow the chart.

By your own argument you should be a doctor or in government. You have more than enough of the necessary intellectual incompetence that you say they have to qualify.

I'll add to the piling on regarding the absurdity of your post.

1. I've had bad mechanics who failed to diagnose the problem with my car and failed to fix it right the first time. Technicians get it wrong sometimes. I think I've actually had better luck with medical diagnosis.

2. As others pointed out, lawyers can't possibly always get the best outcome for their clients, because one side has to lose the case if the other side wins.

3. Firefighters don't always put out the fire. Sometimes a conflagration is out of their control and they let the structure burn to the ground.

4. Most importantly, you completely fail to support your conclusion that licensing makes bad doctors. You have not provided any evidence at all to support that conclusion. I certainly would not want an untrained, unlicensed doctor.

Yeah the OP hasn't dealt with lawyers, fund raisers, or university development officers lol