I have seen my fair share of doctors over the years, and I have found something interesting. Some seem less painful than others.
When I was still in high school, I saw the gastroenterologist brother of the one I am presently seeing. The one I am seeing now is brilliant. He is even well known in his field. But his brother I saw in hs was, well, a dimwit (I’m sorry–I have no other way of putting it). When he gave me my first colonoscopy in hs, it was the most painful one of my life. He kept saying, Tell me if you feel any pain, that means I’m rupturing your colon (!). I kept saying, Stop!! Stop!! You’re rupturing my colon! And each time, he jumped back and stopped. Finally, I realized at the rate, it would go on forever. So I clammed up, and let him finish the procedure. With his smarter brother, there was very little pain at all. It almost seemed like he really knew what he was doing in fact. And that is my question…
Is the pain you feel a good indicator of how good a doctor is? I mean some doctors could just be less compassionate in this regard. So I don’t know. Well?
Well, that certainly indicates competence of one kind, at least with that procedure. Plenty of doctors are smart, but not so good with their hands. One wishes they’d specialized in internal medicine!
I remember a dermatologist I went to as a teenager; good doctor, but… I went in regularly for “acne surgery,” which was done by his nurse (I guess), and every so often I’d go in for a checkup, and he would do the work himself. When the nurse did it, it felt like pampering – not painless, but gentle. When he did it, it felt like my face was being slowly and painstakingly turned into hamburger.
Well, pain during a colonoscopy does not mean that a colon is rupturing. Pain with colonoscopy is normal, and should result in the colonoscopist considering whether or not to dose the patient with more IV pain reliever.
And one patient’s intractable, unbearable pain is another patient’s barely noticeable annoyance.
How a doctor treats his overall patient population’s pain is a better indication of competence than how an individual patient perceives that his/her pain was treated.
Lots of patients (and all too many doctors) consider the presence of pain to indicate a significant oxycodone deficiency.
An indication of competency at avoiding pain - yes.
An indication of his compassion and his understanding the human body - probably.
An indication of competency at fixing whatever is wrong with you - probably no.
I’ve had the need to have my knee drained a few times. Huge needle into the knee, suck out fluid. Some guys can do it almost painlessly, some can make it agony. I think it has to do with their aim but the result is the same in the end.
I know what you mean, but avoiding that “normality” as much as possible is what a good gastroenterologist does.
Or at least I think that’s probably the case based on my own experience, where one moment I was in the colonoscopy room getting the IV meds and the next thing I knew I was in recovery talking to Mrs. J. Now that’s what I call a competent gastroenterologist.
On a related note, I tend not to trust physicians who refer to patient “discomfort”. “Discomfort” is what you experience when your underwear rides up on you. “Pain” is what you get with a medical procedure*. Reluctance to provide adequate anesthesia because the M.D. thinks most everyone should tolerate a certain level of “discomfort” does not fly with me. (It should be noted that anesthetics come with associated risks, though this is less true of local anesthetics).
*speaking as someone who’s both given and received such procedures.
I think that’s what I’d call a good anesthesiologist. One minute I was lying in what I guess was the procedure room, getting into the proper position, and the next minute I was in the recovery room, wondering why I hadn’t had the procedures done yet. Apparently I’d talked to the doc before I woke up fully, but I never remembered it.
Back to the OP, I’ve had to have a lot of blood samples taken over the years. The various people who’ve taken it have definitely had different skill levels. The people who took the time to find out for sure where that vein was BEFORE poking me with a needle almost always caused little or no pain. The folks who tied a tourniquet around my arm and then went digging in my inner elbow, hoping for a flash of red, almost always caused me a lot of pain, and they didn’t seem to care that it hurt, either. Same experience with the procedures that doctors do…some will try to minimize the pain, and some won’t. And whether it’s correct or not, my iimpression is that those who take the trouble to try to minimize the pain are more competent than those who don’t.
You get no argument from me. You’ll note I said the appropriate response to a complaint of pain during colonoscopy was for the colonoscopist to decide whether or not to give more IV pain meds.
Actually, they only started sedating me two years ago (and it definately was a colonoscopy FWIW). For some reason, up till then, I was only “semi-sedated” (i.e., they basically gave me pain killers and I had to grin and bear it:)).
