DIAGNOSTIC DRUG
So, I wanted to find House, MD (the king of diagnostic doctors on TV) in my local area. I research online to find out that there is no Diagnostic Specialty. Although this seems ridiculous, I continue. My search leads me to find that most doctors believe they are diagnosticians. And they are, up to a point. Most doctors will take a history, state you have a cold, bruise, ache, or worse, and send you to a local specialist in the region/system of your body that is affected.
This redirection to specialists is not about finding a physician with diagnostic ability. Just that you’re being directed to someone else whose credentials you don’t have. Shouldn’t every doctor have a diagnostic qualification, if the medical system doesn’t include this as a specialty? How about a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 for the diagnostic skill set level? A peer-rated system would work well, along with a customer-rated system. Delving into, deducing, concluding, and having the ability to integrate and extract from vast knowledge about infection, degeneration, heredity, mental and environmental health requires special skill. So why not have a separate specialization and definitive certification in Diagnostic Medicine? If we wait a few years, for political correctness, Internal Medicine will probably be called Diagnostic Medicine with no change in requirements.
THE DOCTOR IS IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE PATIENT
In this quest, we must begin by putting roles into perspective. WE, THE PATIENTS, are the employer, hiring the doctor. Unfortunately, the demand for diagnostic skill and competence is greater than the supply. So we forget about our roles, for the most part, and consider ourselves lucky when the employee allows us to hire them. Bottom line: When we need medical attention, our perspective changes and we lose focus.
Although we tend to forget, we, in the role of employer, can monitor, direct and impact the behavior of the doctor, in the role of employee, to a certain extent. It is true that each doctor provides the service in his own way and has the right to do so. But we have the right to ask questions, extend our service time if we need to, be satisfied that we have been well cared for, and terminate the doctor’s employment if we are not satisfied. Hint: talk to the doctor and don’t be shy. Doctors like to clarify.
In many cases, even though doctors have taken an oath of service, they may feel the need to act pompous and full of ego. This may be the result of wanting to wear the blood, sweat, tears, and money they spent to complete medical school on their sleeve. Happens. It’s a natural fact when you learn a lot that pride and ability can creep in with arrogance. They are bad manners; it is not always; is human and what is a little insecurity among human beings that saves lives? Simply put, doctors are generally not considered YOUR employee or YOUR servant.
Due to caseloads, rising malpractice insurance costs, “allowable amount” cuts from insurance companies, rising illness; Doctors typically spend less time with their patients because their list has grown along with expenses. Typical consumers do not pay for “exclusive” care. The Concierge Physician setup is a great option, as a result of over-patients or consumer dissatisfaction with only five-minute appointments with doctors. Choosing to pay double or ten times the security rate for a 20, 30 or 60 minute appointment is part of our free enterprise system. Live!
DOCTOR’S CREDENTIALS
Research internists are told that they are the closest thing to a diagnostician. But should we have to become customers before we do our research or to do our research? Should we pay to interview our employee? Should we buy a service we know nothing about? Shouldn’t we have open online access to a central medical information system free of charge where we can find all the credentials on one page, or a spec sheet, like the MSDS (material safety data sheet) for manufacturing?
Let’s go back to my term “doctor”. I have been using this term to refer to anyone who is in medicine. I am not using the words “anyone who practices medicine” because I do not subscribe to the word “practice” in this usage. I want someone who already has the knowledge, not someone who needs to practice to get the knowledge.
Yes, we learn from experience, but doctors should be doing, not practicing, if I have the choice. I am the first to say that you can get guru care from someone with less or different training than the doctor who got the best grades or went to the best medical school. The truth is that training greatly affects the student, which means that someone with a less formal education but with passion and a brilliant teacher can become a better qualified doctor than the student without passion who memorizes, as long as the exams are passed and an ability test is administered.
So why are these credentials left for our investigation and not listed, as a general rule? Is it because, at any time, a patient can complain and a doctor would rather not have credentials or reviews, than deal with negative reviews?
we should have full access to primary medical school and the expiration date of the board certification of all physicians who post a physical or Internet tile. Strangely, this data is NOT commonly offered. Is it fear of judgment? Or is it to create a demand for this information so that service associations, often owned by doctors, can charge for collecting the most up-to-date information?
Should physician information, such as nutrition labels, be required? And what about the diagnostic rating system? I believe in revealing ingredients as I believe in revealing who is a great diagnostician and what measurement method was used to decide.
A free site I have used to search for hospitals and doctors is www.healthgrades.com. Whichever service you use, you want to make sure that the doctor you are consulting cannot afford the nice and positive comments that will be placed in the comments section.
CONCLUSION OF THE DIAGNOSIS
Finding a diagnostician is not easy. We have briefly mentioned the concepts of credentials, qualifications, medical schools, research. These questions are prerequisites to the search. It is not enough to put a suffix after your name without crediting your suffix. If that, we could all emulate Frank AbagnaIe, Jr., who posed as a doctor (whose life was played by Leo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can).
In the next article, we will look at the common traits of a diagnostician and see how they exist in a specialty that does not exist, Diagnostic Medicine.