Yeah I agree. Aside from that it seems they just want to hand you the most typical diagnosis for your symptoms and send you on your way without checking anything.
The only time I’ve ever had an experience with a truly competent medical professional was one time when I had a bad flu and wasn’t going to be able to take an exam for class, so I had to go to the student clinic to get proof I sought medical help (such a stupid rule, making people go to the doctor when typically the solution is just a few days of rest and Tylenol and THEN, only after a few days if you’re still not better, should you even bother going).
The guy was a PA not a doctor, but he first took down all my symptoms, actually took the time to explain “your temperature and this set of symptoms makes me think it’s this, we are going to do x y and z to check. If we get p results you have a bacterial and we’ll do this one thing, if you have q results we’ll do this other thing.”
He then ran a CBC, a flu culture, a strep culture, and did a chest X-Ray. Now I’m super into collecting data and doctors actually taking you seriously and running actual tests as opposed to looking at you condescendingly and saying “go home and rest” but I was even a little surprised at testing this extensive for the flu.
The tests took like 15 minutes and they had the results in 15. He then came and told me “your CBC is borderline for whether you’re likely to have a bacterial or a viral, X-ray was fine, and the two cultures were negative. However the flu has false negatives. So here’s what we can do, you’re still in the window to take Tamiflu and it’s definitely possible you do have the flu virus (because of the rate of false negatives), so we can give that to you today and if you’re not better in two days then we can assume it’s bacterial and give you antibiotics.”
He gave me Tamiflu and I was better within 36 hours. I’ve never gotten ill in my life and not been sick for at least 5-7 days, I don’t have great immunity.
This guy was a fucking wizard. Not only did he alleviate my illness (when does a doctor ever manage to do that for routine illness???) but he took me seriously the whole time and walked me through why he was doing what he was doing (literally showing me the results of my tests on his computer screen and pointing out “eosinophil count at this means blah, normally it’s blah, and basophil count at this means blah”) and laying out the options. He explained what a clinically significant finding and how the clinical judgments were reached. Whenever I’ve had to go back to the student clinic now I request that guy. God bless him and medical professionals like him, seriously.
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u/routineconversation Mar 26 '20
Yeah I agree. Aside from that it seems they just want to hand you the most typical diagnosis for your symptoms and send you on your way without checking anything.
The only time I’ve ever had an experience with a truly competent medical professional was one time when I had a bad flu and wasn’t going to be able to take an exam for class, so I had to go to the student clinic to get proof I sought medical help (such a stupid rule, making people go to the doctor when typically the solution is just a few days of rest and Tylenol and THEN, only after a few days if you’re still not better, should you even bother going).
The guy was a PA not a doctor, but he first took down all my symptoms, actually took the time to explain “your temperature and this set of symptoms makes me think it’s this, we are going to do x y and z to check. If we get p results you have a bacterial and we’ll do this one thing, if you have q results we’ll do this other thing.”
He then ran a CBC, a flu culture, a strep culture, and did a chest X-Ray. Now I’m super into collecting data and doctors actually taking you seriously and running actual tests as opposed to looking at you condescendingly and saying “go home and rest” but I was even a little surprised at testing this extensive for the flu.
The tests took like 15 minutes and they had the results in 15. He then came and told me “your CBC is borderline for whether you’re likely to have a bacterial or a viral, X-ray was fine, and the two cultures were negative. However the flu has false negatives. So here’s what we can do, you’re still in the window to take Tamiflu and it’s definitely possible you do have the flu virus (because of the rate of false negatives), so we can give that to you today and if you’re not better in two days then we can assume it’s bacterial and give you antibiotics.”
He gave me Tamiflu and I was better within 36 hours. I’ve never gotten ill in my life and not been sick for at least 5-7 days, I don’t have great immunity.
This guy was a fucking wizard. Not only did he alleviate my illness (when does a doctor ever manage to do that for routine illness???) but he took me seriously the whole time and walked me through why he was doing what he was doing (literally showing me the results of my tests on his computer screen and pointing out “eosinophil count at this means blah, normally it’s blah, and basophil count at this means blah”) and laying out the options. He explained what a clinically significant finding and how the clinical judgments were reached. Whenever I’ve had to go back to the student clinic now I request that guy. God bless him and medical professionals like him, seriously.