Do you trust doctors?

[Sailor Kim Jong Moon]

I was thinking about this earlier & MAYBE I spend too much time reading shitty takes online.

Two things:

1. I have spent the last few months reading about how certain lefty doctors no longer have “sympathy” for the unvaccinated. And how those obnoxious CNN pundits think unvaccinated people are equivalent to drunk drivers. I was in the ER this week and felt the need to reiterate my vaccine status because I was genuinely nervous they would give my family substandard care if they believed we were unvaccinated.

2. I am seeing a pediatric endocrinologist in the next few weeks. I looked on their site for more information & of course they treat gender dysphoria/prescribe puberty blockers. This a CHILDRENS hospital. They have a pediatric transgender clinic which just alone makes me feel uneasy.

Perhaps I was naive prior to the pandemic, but the more I look around the less trust I have in doctors to uphold their oath. Sure, there’s been a rocky past. Leeches, lobotomies, opiates, - but the mainstream evil shit I’ve heard recently has me on edge.

I can imagine nothing more infuriating than being unvaccinated & struggling to breathe while listening to two fat nurses debating on if I deserve medical care due to my vaccine status - or - taking my diabetic kid to the endocrinologist and having to share a waiting room with some unfortunate 7 year old tranny & their munchie mom.

Have doctors always seemed this evil?

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Not anymore lol

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I trust my current doctor. In general though? Not so much.

 

[DumbDude42]

doctors in my country routinely prescribe homeopathic "medicine" to patients who ask for them, and the bill is paid by socialized medicine.
fuck those quacks tbh i'm not trusting any of them

 

[Bonesjones]

Doctors are just human mechanics, sure they might know what they are doing. They also have no problem paying you zero attention to what your actual needs are while figuring out how to fuck you over to pad their pockets as much as possible.

 

[User names must be unique]

I don't trust anyone, especially not doctors they're always whining about how I'm a paranoid schizophrenic which is total bullshit.

 

[Homophobic white dog]

As the good book says,

THE BEST OF DOCTORS ARE DESTINED FOR GEHENNA

Took me some time to figure it out, but yeah. I'm positive they'd kill me if I were to visit a hospital.

 

[Chilson]

Have you watched House MD? The doctors who aren't house and company are self righteous douches with a God complex who exist to sell people drugs legally.

While obviously dramatized, the show pretty accurately portrays the hypocrisy, ego and ignorance doctors as a whole possess. After all, they are still human beings.

 

[Kermit Jizz]

I haven't for a bit and did not need COVID to stop trusting them.

I've told this story on here before, but I'll rewrite for you BB. I had some severe medical complications recently. I was in a position where I stood to suffer so major loss to my wellbeing. This isn't even close to what it was (not going to power level that much), but think on the scale of losing both your legs. I was battling my condition on and off for months and went through two doctors. We tried a number of different treatments that at best repressed the symptoms, they could not determine the issue. After so much trial and error I stared doing google research and came up with a theory as to what the issue was. TLDR: It was a rare adverse reaction to another medicine I had taken, and the only solution was another specific type of medication (I didn't know the name of it, but I knew specifically what the medicine needed to do). At the time I was already on the 2nd Dr, and when asked they said the medicine I was describing did not exist. Well I moved onto a third and low and behold after 1 visit they prescribed me the exact sort of treatment I was looking for. I was able to better diagnose my own condition than 2/3 of the doctors I visited.

I learned quite a bit from this experience, but the key takeaway to me was that doctors aren't that smart or special. Not to say they are stupid, they're probably smarter than the average person by a little, but doctors on average are no more miracle workers than any specialized professional. I don't blame the first two docs for not figuring out my issue, it was a rare occurrence beyond their normal experience. You can't expect them to be omniscient. But at the same time, they are really useless at anything outside their narrow experience (not meant to be an insult, this is just how humans are). It'd be like going to a Windows IT guy and asking a Linux question, he'd be next to useless. That's not anyone's fault, but it is something you really need to keep in mind when talking to professionals. They will be Gods at what they know, but what they don't know you would be better off googling yourself.

So I don't outright distrust doctors, but I take their word on the same level I'd take a mechanic or someone similar. I use their words as a tool combined with online research and my own thoughts to make an informed decision. At no point would I ever take their word as de facto truth.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

I do not inherently trust or distrust doctors but I will say that a leading cause of death on Earth is malpractice.

The worst thing you can do as a person is look up to another person as though they were infallible or godlike. Doctors are just people. Some are smart, some are dumb, some are competent and some are walking disasters.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

Blanket trust? That has always been a bad idea. Just like most things in life, you have evaluate each one individually.

I've been involved in healthcare for 17 years, and I have never had a blanket trust of medical doctors. I have literally seen way too many of them maim or straight up kill patients with stupidity or neglect to have blanket trust of any medical doctors.

 

[Vingle]

No, and I don't need their sympathy. I need them to actually do their job. Which they usually don't do, especially the ones working for the public.
I'm a healthy boi, but if I need something. I do it a private clinic.

 

[melty]

Sort of? I would trust them more than doctor Google, but I would also question and get a second opinion if something was really serious or didn't feel right. I have run into scammy doctors before.

 

[Penis Drager]

but I would also question and get a second opinion if something was really serious or didn't feel right.

A second opinion always important when it comes to anything serious.
One example I've heard before goes something like:
"Let's say you're diagnosed with a relatively rare disease, one in 1000 people get it. The test they offer has a 99% accuracy rate with no false negatives, only false positives. How sure are you that you have the disease?"
You might assume that you're 99% positive because that's the accuracy of the test. But in a perfectly representative population of 1000 people, one of them had the disease and 10 of them are false positives. So it's still 10x as likely that you're a false positive than not. Running this test twice will bring almost absolute certainty.

 

[Eydallur]

I trust doctors just about as much as I trust any other professional.
Are there limits to my knowledge? Are there limits to my equipment? Are there limits to the skills and experience of my colleagues? Would I still tell a potential customer to go across the road and bother someone else even if I can help them just because I'm backed up enough with the work I've got and it'd be too small a job to justify setup/prep?

I've found that often those with an undue trust in medical professionals tend not to have much experience in the workplace.

 

[Niggernerd]

I only trust hot nurses alas thats becoming more rare these days.

 

[John Titor]

Trust but not in the blind faith kind of way. I'll still put them above dipshit dunning-kruger armchair physicians on the internet.

 

[eDove]

In theory, no. In practice, yes.

The average MD doesn't give a fuck about anything other than pushing medications onto you.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

A second opinion always important when it comes to anything serious.
One example I've heard before goes something like:
"Let's say you're diagnosed with a relatively rare disease, one in 1000 people get it. The test they offer has a 99% accuracy rate with no false negatives, only false positives. How sure are you that you have the disease?"
You might assume that you're 99% positive because that's the accuracy of the test. But in a perfectly representative population of 1000 people, one of them had the disease and 10 of them are false positives. So it's still 10x as likely that you're a false positive than not. Running this test twice will bring almost absolute certainty.

Ooh ooh I vaguely remember this from statistics. If anyone wants to look into this more this is type alpha and type beta failures.

Spoiler: Statistics minus the math

In the real world when running tests we have to balance the costs with the two types of failures, so usually a doctor will use a (relatively) cheap test with a higher risk of a false positive. It's not that they want false positives, but if you have to have some failures either way false negatives are more dangerous.

If you get a false negative, you think you're fine when you really aren't, you walk out and don't treat your condition. If you get a false positive, you panic and get another test done, then you realize it's no big deal. It's just easier to manage things if the only mistakes in the beginning are false positives.

Then once you test positive, usually the second test they do is a different test. This is a little because we don't usually have tests that are as great as the 99% accurate example, and a little because we're not sure what causes the failures in the first place. If the failures aren't just random chance, then there's a risk that whatever made the first attempt fail will also make the second attempt fail. I can't remember if there's an ideal type of failure for this test, but I do remember that this test is often more expensive and difficult to do (which is why they try to weed out people with the cheap test first).

 

[NoSpiceLife]

Not on my life, not on your life. I have spent years telling people that they have to advocate for themselves, and that means doing your own research. If you are unfortunate to not know what that is, and although it can often end up being worse than nothing, any type of research can at least be a starting point for asking questions. If you actually are fortunate enough to find a good doctor they can give you reasons for and against, that is.

Example of a doctors training. In all their time at med school, they do 2 hours on headaches. That's it! A neurologist, a further 2 hours. So if you happen to suffer from something headache related, that doesn't present in the way majority of other people do, you can often get dismissed completely.

I have seen a lot of doctors (I have a tendency to get bored...), NOT ONCE have I come across a doctor that has taken me seriously, sorry I am wrong, there was 1, and amazingly they weren't at all worried about something, that majority of others go straight to, and blame, instead of understanding the difference between a cause and a symptom.

After the last year especially, any skerrick of respect I may have had left, is completely gone.