Patient Empowerment Has The Potential To Be Problematic
Let me say first that I am a practicing primary care doctor who is very much focused on patient centered care. Though I cannot go back to being a patient who is unaware about what a doctor does, the terminology she uses, or what the importance of certain test results are, I can empathize with the overwhelming amounts of information, challenges, and stressors patients and families can have in navigating the healthcare system to get the right care. This is the reason I wrote my book.
However, over the past few months I’ve noticed a particularly disturbing trend. Patients are not consulting doctors for advice, but rather demanding testing for diagnoses which are not even remote possibilities. A little knowledge can be dangerous particularly in the context of little to no clinical experience. Where many patients are today are where medical students are at the end of their second year – lots of book knowledge but little to no real world experience.
More patients are becoming the day traders of the dot.com boom. Everyone has Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*