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Experts today call for more value to be given to patients’ ‘lived experiences’ as a study of over 1,000 patients and clinicians found multiple examples of patient reports being under-valued.
The research, led by a team at the University of Cambridge and Kings’ College London, found that clinicians ranked patient self-assessments as least important in diagnostic decisions, and said that patients both over- and under-played their symptoms.
One patient shared the common feeling of being disbelieved as “degrading and dehumanising” and added: “If I had continued to have regard for clinicians’ expertise over mine, I would be dead… When I enter a medical appointment and my body is being treated as if I don’t have any authority over it and what I’m feeling isn’t valid then that is a very unsafe environment… I’ll tell them my symptoms and they’ll tell me that symptom is wrong, or I can’t feel pain there, or in that way.”
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This is a harsh but fair criticism of medical practice before 2020 turned MDs into torturers. Sticking to the pre-holocaust situation for the sake of argument, this may even be a bit too harsh.
Hypochondriacs have always been a nuisance for doctors. I’m definitely a hypochondriac, and I’ve learned to avoid bothering docs with my dubious “symptoms” and posthoc “correlations”. But on the few occasions when I came in with a real problem, the docs often misdiagnosed or misprescribed, which didn’t contribute to a feeling of general trust.
In short, I understand why docs didn’t want to waste their time on my panic-induced “symptoms”. But when they listened appropriately, they were often incompetent. That was the more serious problem before the holocaust.
Polistra's Mill 