The best patients I had are those who know a lot about their condition, it’s just much easier to formulate a plan with them, and they are much more compliant on the treatment.
I think most people don’t realize how much hyperspecilized today’s medical practice is. a GP wouldn’t really know the optimal treatment plan for rare diseases, that’s why specialist and referrals exists. Yes it’s easy to know more than your GP about a specific disease, one chapter from a ‘Tome’ book like (Harrison, schwartz etc…) about your disease is probably 30 pages long that you can read in one night and you would probably understand it if you have studied human physiology before. And trust me your GP didn’t even read that chapter before unless it’s from their specialty or they know about your appointment way beforehand (yes GPs in some countries still have specialties).
However, several things that knowledgeable patients seems to make mistakes about: 1. They know the treatment options and diagnostic tests for their disease but almost never seem to understand the algorithm for when it’s appropriate order a certain test/treatment or skip it. 2. Miss the point about weight of evidence, sometimes they read about novel new treatment reported in some medical site, and they think it’s true, sorry mate, I really cannot care about some new treatment reported in unreplicated study that you read about on webmd. 3. Your conditions context matters a lot, no, just because you read the x treatment is the the initial or even most efficacious treatment, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
BTW, the doc that would worry me is the one who doesn’t “google” (Psst, it’s uptodate.com not google) your condition, even for not so-rare-condition, reading a refresher on the topic sometimes feels mandatory. In fact if you got admitted to the hospital and your condition isn’t typical bread-and-butter of the doc’s practice, it’s almost guaranteed the junior doctor that will you see in the morning have spent an hour or two last night reading the chapter about your condition once they were informed you were admitted.
Doc here, I would like to chime in on this.
The best patients I had are those who know a lot about their condition, it’s just much easier to formulate a plan with them, and they are much more compliant on the treatment.
I think most people don’t realize how much hyperspecilized today’s medical practice is. a GP wouldn’t really know the optimal treatment plan for rare diseases, that’s why specialist and referrals exists. Yes it’s easy to know more than your GP about a specific disease, one chapter from a ‘Tome’ book like (Harrison, schwartz etc…) about your disease is probably 30 pages long that you can read in one night and you would probably understand it if you have studied human physiology before. And trust me your GP didn’t even read that chapter before unless it’s from their specialty or they know about your appointment way beforehand (yes GPs in some countries still have specialties).
However, several things that knowledgeable patients seems to make mistakes about: 1. They know the treatment options and diagnostic tests for their disease but almost never seem to understand the algorithm for when it’s appropriate order a certain test/treatment or skip it. 2. Miss the point about weight of evidence, sometimes they read about novel new treatment reported in some medical site, and they think it’s true, sorry mate, I really cannot care about some new treatment reported in unreplicated study that you read about on webmd. 3. Your conditions context matters a lot, no, just because you read the x treatment is the the initial or even most efficacious treatment, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
BTW, the doc that would worry me is the one who doesn’t “google” (Psst, it’s uptodate.com not google) your condition, even for not so-rare-condition, reading a refresher on the topic sometimes feels mandatory. In fact if you got admitted to the hospital and your condition isn’t typical bread-and-butter of the doc’s practice, it’s almost guaranteed the junior doctor that will you see in the morning have spent an hour or two last night reading the chapter about your condition once they were informed you were admitted.