Another problem that I’ve noticed with the medical profession is the “disease label diagnosis” approach. They don’t try to find out what’s going wrong with the chemistry of your body. They want to give you a disease label, put you in a little box. The human body is a complex collection of chemical processes. All doctors treat the human body as a collection of diseases, tests and treatments. This stems from their recall-the-facts training.
Every single doctor that I’ve been to, every single doctor from General Practitioner, through suburban Consultant Physician, to Professor of Medicine at The Private Hospital, uses the same diagnostic method: think of a disease name, recall the symptoms of that disease. If the patient fits, recall the tests associated with that disease and send the patient off with a pre-printed pathology request form. If the result is positive, recall the treatments associated with that disease. Fine if you have a common disease that they’ve learned about, but of no use if you don’t fit the facts that they can recall. They have no ability to think about the problem differently. Even the professors of medicine that I’ve seen at Sydney’s leading teaching hospitals work the same way. They can not think outside the little diagnostic box.
Picking lots of tests out of the pathologist’s catalogue does not make a good diagnostician.
And they teach new doctors to think the same way. I suspect also that the medical establishment very strongly encourages trainee doctors to conform to the long-accepted methods and thinking styles. Any young doctor who might think outside the square is very quickly brought back into line, or excluded.
I’m guessing but perhaps 90% of patients can be helped to some degree with the current, recall-the-facts, disease-label, diagnostic approach, because they have a common disease that’s easy to label. Once you’ve got a label, you can get treatment. Of the remaining 10% of patients, some receive no benefit but a significant percentage are harmed by the lack of any real problem-solving skills in our medical profession, as they are subjected to the old standbys of numerous anti-biotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-histamines, and then the last resort of the incompetent, anti-depressants.
I said that once you’ve got a label you can get treatment. But also once you’ve got a label, all doctors stop work; they fail to consider any other symptoms or problems. My daughter with CF has reported other symptoms to doctors many times over the years. The non-CF doctors just say “well you’ve got CF” while the CF doctors say “that’s not CF related”. The disease label is dangerous for all patients.
“Too much information, not enough wisdom.”
“most medical tests the doctor orders for you are necessary to help diagnose your medical problem or determine a treatment’s progress. But not all tests are necessary. Some would tell you that the reason there are so many tests is because doctors no longer trust their own diagnosing capabilities to assess a patient. Therefore, they rely too heavily on test results.”
“The second reason doctors order too many tests is called “defensive medicine.” Defensive medicine is the way doctors protect themselves from lawsuits. If some mistake is made in the diagnosis or treatment of a patient, and the doctor can show that certain tests were conducted (whether or not they were needed), the doctor can appear as if he was diligent enough to think of the many possibilities. In effect, he’s creating a paper trail to defend himself against the possibility that you will sue him later.”
Trisha Torrey, About.com
Why Does My Doctor Send Me for So Many Medical Tests