On maybe 3 occasions, I have told a Dr that I own a stethoscope. In all cases, the reaction was a suspicious “Why?” - the kind of reaction I’d expect if I told a cop I had armor-piercing ammo. In a pistol. In my pocket. Now.
Why? Is owning medical gear a symptom of something dangerous.
No, it is NOT any of your business why
I’m not a doctor, but if you told me you had a stethoscope, I’d probably ask why. I would assume you wanted to talk about it because you brought it up in conversation.
It’s the whole concept of “knowing just enough to be dangerous”: People can have just enough information available to them and just enough knowledge about that information to get really wild about absolutely nothing, because they assume the human body is a precision instrument and minor variations are the sign of the Doomy Dooms of DOOM! These people tend to think that any temperature other than 98.6°F is the sign of impending death, not realizing that normal human temperature varies up and down throughout the day as a reaction to external conditions, activity level, and your circadian rhythm.
Physicians are working with the public. Anything that makes members of the public jumpy — and hypochondriacs are jumpy — would make them ill at ease.
Why are you telling every doctor you meet that you own a stethoscope?
It’s not paranoia. As a physician, I might ask that question; it depends on the context. Broadly speaking, there are two groups of laypeople (completely untrained persons, that is) who own a stethoscope: nutcases and people with a practical reason to own one. Both are useful things to know. It has nothing to do with “paranoia” or some sort of sense of having my professional toes stepped on.
That an individual would make an issue of it, or consider it paranoia on my part to inquire further, would increase my concern over the need for a serum porcelain level, I admit.
If a patient told me they had a stethescope, then said it was none of my business why they had one, it would reflect poorly on chances for a decent doctor-patient relationship developing, or continuing. Open, honest dialogues are critical for such a relationship.
I agree with the others, especially the above statement. I work in the medical field with patients, doing research - IANAD/N. I myself don’t own a stethoscope, because I don’t need one. A patient telling me that he/she owns a stethoscope would to me seem like an invitation to continue the discussion and for me to ask why. A response of the “none of your business” type would seem very weird. Plus in medical research, honesty about symptoms, past medical history, medication compliance, and the like, is extremely important both for the quality of the research and the patient’s safety.
Plus, any really decent stethoscope is kind of pricey, and their uses for the average person are kind of limited, so it’s just an odd thing to have, much less to be secretive about. It’s even less useful and interesting for a non-physician/nurse to have than, say, a microscope or telescope.
Do you have a list of inanimate objects that you feel your patients should explain ownership of if they mention that they they have one?
Say the stethescope were a pair of handcuffs or a navel ring or a guedel’s airway?
If someone brings it up in conversation, maybe I’m off-the-wall about this, but I would assume they would want to discuss the object. So a really good question would be along the lines of “why do you have one?”/“what do you use (object) for?”/etc., if you aren’t sure.
If someone told me “I just bought a KitchenAid stand mixer”, I would ask what they were using it for (bread? awesome cupcakes? meringues?), even though I own and use one myself. If they then said it was none of my business, that would be Very Odd, to say the least.
Well I have all the things I listed plus a stethescope, but I see your point. If I mention it apropos of nothing I guess the obvious question is, “why?”
Exactly. We medico types are supposed to be listening to patients, and asking appropriate follow-up questions.
Besides, if it turns out he’s got a medical instrument collection, that’d be cool to talk about.
I’ll send my mother along. I couldn’t think what to buy her one Christmas and bought her an antique set of medical instruments in a velvet lined case. She’s an ex-nurse and was fascinated.
I have a Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope in my rumpus room, but I don’t wanna talk about it, so piss off.
**QtM **is a special case… If his patients have handcuffs that aren’t already locked on their wrists, the warden will surely want to know about it. 
If anyone asked me, I’d say it’s because we are almost-but-not-quite first responders at the Renaissance Faire. While we’re a running show with the public in attendance, we have real EMTs on site, but during site build, we’re on our own and we patch up a lot of skinned knees, cut fingers and heatstroke. Same deal at the Dickens Christmas Fair, but there, we’re more often listening to lungs and saying “You’re gurgling and wheezing. Get out of here before you infect the rest of us and go see a doctor.”
I’m not a doctor but maybe you should just stop mentioning it if you don’t want to discuss it. I have a rare talisman in my possession but you don’t see me bringing it up all the time. Yeesh.
I think some of the responses are working from assumptions that may be inaccurate.
usedtobe told us it’s none of our business why he has a stethoscope, he did not say he told the doctors that.
He did not say he tells every doctor about it. Those three might be three out of thirty for all we know.
He used “Why the paranoia” as a thread title, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he considers it a sign of paranoia for the doctors to simply inquire “why?” It’s how they inquire why, as descriptively related in the OP, that has him wondering what they’re afraid (paranoid) of.
The question as I see it, which has really been answered yet, is why those doctors seemed very noticeably suspicious when informed of his stethoscope.
Good point. I plead guilty.
Good point, though the OP was quite short on details. For all we know, the doctors are curious in the “WTF would you own one of those things?” confusion sense and the OP is mistaking it for paranoia.
If delivered in a medical context (not making small talk at a party, but in the context of an appointment), then my first guess would be that the person probably had some reason other than small talk for revealing this information.
Going from that point, were I wondering about the motivation, my suspicions would include:
- that the patient had a history of heart murmur and was attempting to listen in
- that the patient thought that heart disease could be tracked/diagnosed at home with a stethoscope by your average person
- that the patient had an interest in medical gear and/or body functioning in general
- that the patient was potentially paranoid about medical matters/his or her own health
#1 is interesting; I used to work in pediatric cardiology and could see an involved patient finding that cool. Plus if you knew where to place the stethoscope, you could potentially show other people what your murmur sounded like. #3 is also interesting.
#2 and 4 are possibly problematic. I would worry that someone who had a stethoscope and seemed to be heading down these lines of motivation might either be too eager to self-diagnose and self-treat, or might be beating down your door at every pimple or sniffle.
What in the world do you have that for?
It was a birthday present, my precioussss.