Dr. Feel Bad or Worse

Doctor, doctor, give me the news.  And then I’ll go to another doctor to make sure you’re right. 

New research out of Texas finds that patients are misdiagnosed one in twenty times.  This can lead to discomfort, complications, and even death, of course. Unlike previous studies, this one looked at the medical records of patients diagnosed outside of hospitals, in physicians’ offices and clinics.

I won’t go all over my ordeal of three years ago except to say that if I had listened to the two clinic doctors who told me I had the flu, I would not be here today. It’s as simple and as final as that. My own physician wouldn’t even see me when I called.  I couldn’t get past the receptionist who decided, from the description of my symptoms, that I had the flu and refused to give me a quick appointment. They were completely wrong and I’m only here because I’m stubborn and I listened to a little voice inside of me that disagreed with them.

A friend of my parents’ blocked arteries were recently missed by two doctors.  Until his daughter-in-law, a cardiac care nurse, saw him in person and forced him to go immediately to an ER, he was a walking time-bomb. She saved his life.

When you extrapolate the findings from the Texas researchers, it means 12-million people are misdiagnosed each year in the US.  We can likely expect comparable results in Canada, although the most recent data in our country comes from a 2012 paper that shows it’s even worse here. One in five patients are misdiagnosed and anywhere from 9,000 to 23,000 Canadians die every year as a result.

Don’t blame only incompetence, though.  Many doctors are stretched to the limit, working very long hours and they’re only human, after all. Sometimes they do double-book so they don’t go in depth in a quick patient visit and miss potential drug interactions and other details. It’s frightening and what’s worse is, a woman of my age and slightly older is seven times more likely than any other demographic to be misdiagnosed.

You have to second-guess the doctor if you don’t think you should accept the diagnosis. You have to trust your instincts, get another opinion, talk to people about it (don’t be stoic!) and raise a friggin’ stink if you think what you’ve been told isn’t accurate. I’d much rather be known as a pain-in-the-butt patient who’s alive to annoy the medical profession than the dead woman who was nice and easy-going about whatever she was told.

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