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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25775 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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It's pretty common to give print outs like medication information sheets, or something called an "after visit summary." Frequently what happens is that it gets comically enormous and useless as various stakeholders fill it with random bullshit.

Anything more personalized/off the cuff becomes extremely difficult, especially as corporate control of medicine pushes doctors to see more patients faster. Really hard to do when your visits are 15 minutes max and that's supposed to include your charting time.

Frequently what happens is that it gets comically enormous and useless as various stakeholders fill it with random bullshit.

Could you give any examples of "erroneous"? I've certainly seen "enormous"/"useless"/"random bullshit", and burying important truths in so much filler they get ignored might have consequences as bad as falsehoods, but I just don't recall seeing any likely falsehoods. Even the random bullshit is unevidenced rather than obviously untrue, along the lines of "let's put X in the list of possible side effects, as CYA, even though our only evidence for X is that in one study the treatment group reported it almost as often as the control group"...

Not nearly as common as death by volume of paperwork, but an example of actual errors is when practice changes due to new information, and nobody updates the info sheets.

Yeah I was talking about something a bit more personalised for condition management that is tailored to the patient rather than a source sheet ripped straight off webMD. Agreed that there probably isn't time to do this in a 15 minute consult unless the doctor is young really on the ball.

I actually try to find younger GP's for this reason. Many boomer doctors just have not kept up with newer treatments, a professional bedside manner, or technology use.

That approach can be fine for medical (as opposed to surgical specialties - in those you want someone who has some years of physical practice without being too far along in age), although the caution is that medical knowledge changes quickly. I remember within a couple years of starting residency (much less being an attending) some of what I was taught was outdated and it would have been very easy to not notice.

As to your other piece a lot of surgeons (and things like Oncologists) will have ancillary staff who can help generate counseling and additional information for patients in a way that is actually helpful.

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