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Doctors Seeing a Rise In "Google-itis"
It's one of the fastest-growing health issues that doctors now face: "Google-itis." Everyone from concerned mothers to businessmen on their lunch break are typing in symptoms and coming up with rare diseases or just plain wrong information. Many doctors are bringing computers into examination rooms now so they can search along with patients to alleviate their fears. "I'm not looking for a relationship where the patient accepts my word as the gospel truth," says Dr. James Valek. "I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
I think every website that lists all these varied diseases should put a rarity score next to each illness. That way when you think you've got Wilson's disease, you can look and see with a simple number how unlikely it is.
for those scientifically oriented, and aware of our natural cognitive bias, it is a fantastic tool to pin down the real problem, bringing relevant information to discuss with a doctor.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
This.
The dirty truth that's seldom told is: Your doctor doesn't know any better than you do. He or she is making highly educated guesses, and that's about the end of it.
Your tribal witchdoctor of years past had less knowledge, but was doing the exact same thing. Science came along and made medicine less of a guessing game, but it can never remove it completely.
From TFA:
No longer is it between a doctor who knows all and a parent who knows nothing.
Show me the doctor who genuinely 'knows all' and I'll show you a miracle worker. It simply doesn't work that way, never has, and I'm sorry if it makes some practitioners sad that the patients have more tools.
As in the case above, however, this is genuinely a good thing for us all.
Not sure that's a counter, actually; I don't think that's the kind of behavior doctors are concerned about. When your wife found the evidence that she may have been misdiagnosed, she went to her doctor to confirm it and get his opinion; she didn't dismiss him as a quack and go all homeopathic on him, or assume that he was an idiot and stop taking his advice seriously.
I don't think you understand. Your wife is a rarity.
I am not a doctor. I am studying to be one. I talk to a lot of doctors. The patients who come in who have diagnosed themselves correctly, or close to correctly, such as getting the 'genus' of a disorder or disease correct while the 'species' is incorrect, are so rare that they tend to remember them.
Compare it to a Help Desk worker -- how many callers, per centum, do you think that Help Desk worker gets who would call up, have a correct or nearly so idea about what is wrong, and be calling only to get instructions on how to fix it?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
"Guessing"? To say that medical practitioners, as a whole, are "guessing" is incredibly naive. Does the bridge engineer guess on the load bearing capacity? Does the auto mechanic guess what the appropriate timing is on your timing belt? What about an airline pilot navigating from one airport to another and landing safely? No, no, and no. They use KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE, TOOLS, and INTUITION.
Likening these traits to a medical professional:
Guessing? While there may be those at the lower end of the spectrum that may lack in some of these areas, to generalize so is unfair and misinformed.