My best Doctor ever, and why I admired him/her. (pain, blood)

[arr430]

Most of us have been through lots of doctors. Who did you like the most, and why?

One I remember, I asked if he was going to treat it so-and-so. He said "No, the body is pretty good at curing itself". It did.

One of the first I went to on my own, almost retired, was rushed through med school, then rushed off to the trenches in Belgium to amputate legs without anesthetics. He didn't tolerate much whining.

Another was a highly recruited HS football running back, offered a dozen scholarships, chose Clemson, and suffered a career-endimg injury. He had to fall back on #2, Medicine, interned at Mato, and did my angioplasty as head of the cardiac team at a good hospital.

When I broke my wrist. I asked my doctor why he was attracted to Orthopedics. "My patients get well." I remembered having the same thoughts 50 years ago, when observing medical care in rural Africa. The sick all just die, but not the broken.

What are some of your thoughts?

[Medical Lab Guy]

I place my emphasis, based on my experiences professionally working with doctors, per event.

As you stated certain conditions will get better regardless of the diagnosis or treatment when the body heals itself. That happens quite a lot and I think somebody said that 80% of conditions will get better on their own. The problem with that is incompetence can be hidden or overlooked. Competence is required for serious conditions and not for ones that go away on their own.

I have been misdiagnosed by every primary care doctor I have had except for my present one who refers basically everything to a specialist for a diagnosis. They certainly got most correct I think for the most part.

Your personalities have to match. Some people don't hit it off with certain doctors because of temperament or the way they deal with things like complaints. They consider them too arrogant to work with or just too rigid in their approach without flexibility. Those are personality clashes rather than competence issues. One also wants one who is self-confident but not necessarily arrogant.

Since working with doctors I got to pull back the curtain to look at the great and powerful Oz. Every doctor on earth can be wrong. It doesn't make him bad or incompetent. They can be great and highly decorated but for any given event they can be wrong because we are all human. If not wrong they might not know what in the world is going on. My own primary doctor called the lab with a problem and I was asked to help him out. He wanted to add on an acetaminophen (APAP) level to a previous initial blood sample and he said he was suspecting toxic levels. I told him I would ransack the whole lab looking for that blood sample and do the test if we had the blood sample that was a week old. I found the sample and ran the test and there was no measurable amount of APAP. I went upstairs to the patient's bed where he was and told him of the results. He then told the patient who was feeling ill in bed that he didn't know what was causing his illness. Not a good feeling.

There have been similar situations where doctors have presented themselves for help in the laboratory sometimes desperate to find out what is going on with patients. That's never a good sign. These are up-front nice doctors that are being honest while the arrogant ones would never do that. They would never acknowledge that they don't know and are just guessing.

So what I am getting at is be careful when one makes generalizations about doctors as being good or bad. I am biased towards evidenced-based medicine per event and not on personalities. What that does is it allows you to accept what you consider a good doctor that you are comfortable with but one that you should question any given event. Get a second opinion and even if your doctor was wrong then that doesn't necessarily make him a bad doctor only that he wasn't good with that part of medicine. PCPs are not good at everything. Even the specialist further specialize in a subspecialty many times.

If you choose a doctor who exudes confidence then be careful again. They might sound so convincing that you totally rely on their diagnosis and ignore warning signs. If the event (signs and symptoms) is not resolved then that is a warning sign. I recommend whenever one has what they assume to be a chronic condition that they have a second opinion. Don't just continue to go to the same doctor three times in a row. That happened to a coworker who ended up with terminal breast cancer and lost her life. The doctor attributed the symptoms to muscle pain etc. and she believed it until it was too late.

[arr430]

^^^^^ The presumption is that a doctor is savvy enought to know which patients will accept certain adice. You can tell some, but not the ones who may take it too literally.

[Nov3]

I admired deeply the Nephrologist that attended to my mom. He engaged the family in the overall care and advisals concerning my mom. He spoke with compassion, knowledge, and a dang gone sense of humour too!!
He was direct when needed to be and mildly sugar coated the worst to ease the family. Trust me , The guy could read his crowd and did so with care. I was a bundle of nerves and he knew how much to say and what was best to be left to the procedures.

Secretly I admired that he "defied" the Hospital system. The one my mother was in had the crazy "fees" for Doctors. Charged them to be "a part" of their county health system. He refused to be under their guidelines. So when my parent was admitted the hospital tried to stop him from "visiting" my mom since he had no affliation with the hospital. He said to them- I am licensed to practice and the patient decides which Doctor they wish to oversee their care. The Hospital backed off and my mom did sooo much better with him anyways!

Got to know him as a person, humble and personable! Shared some laughable stories about living in the mid west.

I myself had a retired doctor - She worked for this Charity to help inner city and low income. She surely wasn't in it for the money. She often took the time to answer questions, look up Tips and recommendations from other sources if I asked. She never once treated the patient or even her staff anything less then Valued!! She was a ray of hope even when we openly discussed a sad prognosis I was enduring. She was painfully direct and at the same time acknowledged the personal challenge ahead. Not once did she come off as dismissive or talk down . She ran only the tests necessary and made sure that I understood the results . She didn't order the "lets do that test again, I'm not quite sure they got that right". Midway thru my "treatment", I recall her calling my home and simply wanting to lift my spirits. Who does that ???? Even my friends rarely called to ask how the treatment went. But this Licensed Doctor took the time to call, to follow up if I was experiencing XYZ. She welcomed anything I had to convey. That was the key to keeping my health on track.

[irootoo]

My current eye specialist. For the sad and simple reason that when I told him I was experiencing side effect, he believed me. I have never lied to a physician about side effects but I have rarely been believed.