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Professional Hubris

Southern Pessimist
@SouthernPessimist
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Every physician struggles with pride. The entire system is built on professional pride. A humble, thoughtful doctor who can quieten his mind to listen is a rare and beautiful person.

So I recently had back surgery and am finally regaining some strength in my legs enough to walk. A friend told me about his wife who had a long downhill fight with spinal stenosis. The first doctor she saw said, "Thank God. You got here just in time. Your spine is almost completely closed." Two years later, after extensive surgery and little improvement, she saw a second surgeon who basically said, "If you had only come to me in the first place, you wouldn't be in this mess!"

The funny thing is that both surgeons were saying a version of the same thing, which is only appropriate for a hairdresser.

Pray for improvement in our physician education and selection process. And always, always, be obstinate in asking questions until there is no question left to ask. Then come back to the next visit with even more important questions.

This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.

Discussion (22)

  • EODmom@EODmom

    We are lucky to have had good medical professionals throughout our adult lives. We are also blessed with good genes and good habits, so have not had to stress test the system we’ve got in place.
    But: who has been lucky enough to move and be referred to a new dentist who has not said “Ohhhhh. I can help you with that.” when first looking in the new patient’s mouth? EODDad was not blessed with good tooth genes, so has had just about every preventive and critical procedure available. It seems none of them like the other guy’s work.

  • sawatdeeka@sawatdeeka
    Southern Pessimist (View Post):

    And always, always, be obstinate in asking questions until there is no question left to ask.

    I'm often worried about being "that" annoying patient. I've also had a doctor, a surgeon, who kept skirting my questions and repeating the same answer. She was solid in other areas, and I'm guessing was fine as a surgeon. She just would not address my question.

  • Ekosj@Ekosj

    I heard this from a stand-up comic.

    “Somewhere out there - it’s a statistical certainty - is the WORST Doctor in America. And some poor bastard has an appointment at 9 AM tomorrow!”

    It was funny then. But on reflection it’s very disturbing. Because it’s true. And you know what? It’s worse than that. Because it’s not just one. There are dozens. Probably hundreds, who make up the worst 5%. And I’ll wager that the Drs and nurses among the Ricochetti can probably name a few right now … if they dared. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs famously use the annual review process to purge the bottom 10% of performers. I know, I know, “performance” means different things to a small local practice and a huge medical group owned by a VC firm. But you get the point. How do we rid the profession of the worst of the worst?

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