"The Alienated Patient" - Julian Galt MD

[Felis Catus]

Why are the primary care physicians sending folks to the ER first instead of doing lab work, and then on to specialists if warranted. This doc sounds like he is sleep deprived enough not to make a cogent argument. He must have caught what he thinks is the patients' illness: that of being a chronic complainer.

Folks don't get sent to the ER unless it is for an urgent reason.

This. I'm not in the US but I was repeatedly sent to A&E by my GP. I didn't want to go, a day spent there meant a big crash afterwards but they didn't offer any alternatives and insisted that was the right thing to do.

Last time before discharging me, they brought a senior doctor to tell me to stop coming to A&E. Why was he lecturing me instead of his colleague who repeatedly sent me to them? Am I supposed to refuse care next time a GP or 111 sends me to A&E?

 

[shak8]

This. I'm not in the US but I was repeatedly sent to A&E by my GP. I didn't want to go, a day spent there meant a big crash afterwards but they didn't offer any alternatives and insisted that was the right thing to do.

Last time before discharging me, they brought a senior doctor to tell me to stop coming to A&E. Why was he lecturing me instead of his colleague who repeatedly sent me to them? Am I supposed to refuse care next time a GP or 111 sends me to A&E?

I was going to delete my post. I don't know what individual docs do and why anymore. I thought the substack post by the doctor was a bit incoherent is all.

 

[Hoopoe]

I agree that many diagnoses are questionable and that there is a problem with the proliferation of unreliable diagnoses.

The typical answer to the problem is more of the same or nothing useful at all. Replacing one unreliable diagnosis with another (like hEDS), of the psychosomatic variety, isn't better. One might cause physical harm, the other will cause psychsocial harm.

I think medicine needs to admit that it is out of touch with what is happening. These patients have some problem.

Maybe society has changed so rapidly in the last two generations that there are various new health problems caused in some way by modern society that medicine still hasn't had time to understand.

 

[Arnie Pye]

Maybe society has changed so rapidly in the last two generations that there are various new health problems caused in some way by modern society that medicine still hasn't had time to understand.

I read, quite a long time ago now, that there are (or were) over 70,000 substances that humans come across now in their daily lives that weren't in use before the 1950s. Since I read this so long ago the number will definitely be much higher now.