I have a pretty good doctor.
I commented I was having good results from xxx.
“That does not work, stop doing it.”
I still do it because it works on me.
I still go to that doctor.
I have gone to doctors that thought they were great pilots also.
I had seen that they were not.
I went to them & trusted their services until they crashed their airplanes & died. Have had two do this to me, know of many more that I was not directly in contact with.
By a lot of the criteria posted in this thread, any professional who posts any thought that you (generic) consider ‘woo’ or not scientific enough on a message board, you will not use no matter their skill in their professional abilities, this seems to be your (generic) decision. How strange.
Have seen 3-4 signs in doctors offices that they will not accept medicare patients. They are not being sued about it nor are they in jail. How strange.
If you’re addressing me, GunsNSpot**** I don’t recall saying that doctors who don’t accept insurance from medicare or purchased through a health care exchange should be sued or thrown in jail. I was asking if it is legal to deny a patient because of how they purchased their insurance and said I could be completely wrong in thinking it may be illegal. All I know is emergency room doctors are required to perform life saving treatments on patients regardless of insurance status (but are not required to do any other treatment).
I also don’t think anyone said they would stop seeing a professional strictly because of what their beliefs are. A large part of it is how they go about spreading their beliefs which could indicate a lack of professionalism in general on their part. Nobody needs to be a patient or client of someone who makes them uncomfortable.
My GP is a little concerned I am atheist, I am not even sure how it came up, she doesn’t seem to be trying to convert me as much as to assure me constantly that her God doesn’t really hate me for being a lesbian. I have tried to explain that there is a difference between turning your back on God and atheism but she just doesn’t seem able to grasp that for me there is no God to be mad at or love or feel judged by or even be indifferent about.
The thing is it doesn’t come off at all like as proseltysing, she makes it seem like lack of faith is a basic medical concern like eating too much crap or not exercising enough, if she treated it like a heart attack or something I’d need to run but we find each other amusing and get along really well.
I used to go to an ophthalmologist who, I think, had a secret desire to be a dermatologist. At the beginning of the exam he’d always comment on the “rosacea” on my face. He’d examine my face and write his “rosacea” diagnosis in my chart, then finally begin the eye exam. I had two problems with this. First, I was there to have my eyes checked, not my skin. And second, what I had was seborrheic dermatitis, not rosacea. And I was already seeing a dermatologist.
The guy was an excellent ophthalmologist, but this obsession with my skin drove me to get my eyes checked elsewhere.
It’s GusNSpot. But you are very correct with your version also.
I find it interesting that a lot of people ( generic ) on the SDMB will comment on about what they say ‘I meant’ but seem to fail to read what I posted … :smack:
Well, you certainly win the prize for having the most deeply buggy professional to deal with. That’s such a mess it’s hard to know what to fix first.
If anything. Weirdly enough, it’s not obvious that this is even a problem, except for its breathtakingly bizarre mental twists. I guess I should say, “congratulations”.
My apologies for misreading your user name. I read what you posted, but I guess I didn’t understand what you meant. It came across as sarcastic, but there is no tone in writing obviously, so perhaps I misunderstood.
And that’s pretty bad panache45**** that your ophthalmologist persisted in writing an incorrect and irrelevant diagnosis in your chart despite being corrected multiple times. Reminds me of a doctor in college who just would not accept that scars on my friend’s back were from back surgery, not a domestic violence situation.
I guess it depends on the situation, but I’d like my doctors and dentists to be firmly rooted in medical science. The OP’s second example doesn’t bother me. If someone wants to believe that life begins at conception, OK, that’s their belief and it’s pretty much a matter of definition. (I personally think life begins at retirement, but there you are.) The bottom line: I can trust the judgement of someone who thinks abortion is murder. I disagree, emphatically, but I accept it as an opposing point of view.
However, the OP’s first example, that’s not a “different point of view,” that’s just nuts. Yes, I’d find a new dentist pronto. If she thinks that the Mayan calendar affects the weather, does she also think that magical Aztec incantations will protect you from gum disease? Or that fluoride is part of a government plot to sap our bodily fluids? In short, once the doctor’s belief is in something ludicrous and non-scientific, then I worry about their medical professional ability.
Well, there was the time when my son’s psychologist referred us back to his pediatrician. My son had been diagnosed with severe ADD, including anger outbursts that were so severe they included physical attacks. While at the Dr’s office, he attacked his sister (I was between them, but he was throwing anything that was loose). He climbed into the exam table (betcha didn’t know a kid could even do that). He generally demonstrated rather thoroughly why it was his psychologist thought we should consider medication, in addition to the counseling we were already undergoing.
The dr. Offered to pray for us. Pray all you want and and need to. In that time and place my child needed medical help. I would have happily accepted both. Prayer alone wasn’t cutting it.
We left, with some help from other staff members. I found another pediatrician for my son. When I told him the story, his response was generally to the effect of “here, we practice medicine”.
I did that. My former dentist had a neighbour who was running some quack therapy office. The name of this therapy (something-quantum-something therapy) was so strange that I asked my dentist if he knew in what it consisted.
It turned out that despite being unable to explain that, he was holding his neighbour and his quack theories in high esteem. He even had bought from him (at a very high cost) some machine that oxygenates oxygen and was using it regularly (he would breathe through the machine half an hour/day, his health benefiting greatly from this higher quality oxygen. I’m not talking about more oxygen, but about better oxygen). I don’t remember anymore what else he told me, but it was clear he believed in some quite outlandish “alternative medicine”.
That’s the last time I saw him. He was a nice guy, and never had used or proposed unorthodox care to me, but I don’t want my health in the care of someone like that. Who knows what he could come up with if I had something non trivial.
I was seeing an APRN to manage my meds for Bipolar 2 and ADD.
She started making more broad medical recommendations. I was tired all the time? Maybe I should get checked for sleep apnea. Hm. Turned out I had it, and they put me on a CPAP. All right, that’s good.
Then she started fixating on my size (I am over 250lbs - she was heavier than me even). She thought that if I could get a breast reduction, I could be more active. However, to get a breast reduction, I needed to first lose a significant amount of weight.
So she sent me to a separate clinic, where the doctor did a detailed analysis of my weight, BMI, etc. I even had to send in a pee and poo test. The prognosis was bleak. My whole system was inflamed, my hormones were out of whack, I needed more vitamins (specifically vitamin E), etc., etc. And of course, many of these vitamins and supplements were available right at the clinic, for exorbitant prices!
When my GP found out about them pushing the expensive supplements, and that the doctor there had prescribed me progesterone - which would more likely make me gain weight than lose it, and weren’t we trying to get my weight under control? - she put her foot down and told me never to see him again. It’s worth mentioning that I’d been with my GP for 5-7 years at that point.
The next time I saw my APRN I told her this. She was pissed and got very short with me, implying that I didn’t REALLY care about my recovery, my GP was full of it, etc.
I think the prospective med student who believes anti-choice bullshit has deomnstrated an alarming level of resistance to fact in her chosen field, but maybe actual medical school will disabuse her. I’d be willing to go to a doctor – though not an OB/GYN even if I were the sort of person who needed the services of one – who was anti-choice for reasons other than medical. As for woo … well, there is crank magnetism. Someone who buys into woo not in their field either also buys into woo in their field or must be puzzled how someone who can see the Truth in so many areas buys into ridiculous bullshit in an are they actually know about.
I’m … pretty sure no one is “enrolled in Obamacare.” Does she mean “on Medicaid thanks to the expansion thereof”? “On Medicaid generally”? “Bought insurance through an exchange,” and would she even know that?
All the chain drugstores here have big signs inviting people to ask them about Obamacare. I can’t help wondering, even in the parts of Brooklyn I spend time in, how many socialism-and-microchips wackaloons take them up on it.
I would be out of there if a doctor suggested anything not science based affecting health in any way, and possibly if they suggested anything woo affected physical phenomena other than health. That includes mainstream religion. They can be privately religious, that’s fine, but if they demonstrate that they are under the impression that their god of choice will somehow affect my health then that’s it.
I would be very quick to make a formal complaint and report a doctor. The Netherlands has a “disciplinary tribunal for healthcare”. They probably wouldn’t do much if a doctor believed in homeopathy, but hopefully the doctor would at least hear of the complaint and realise that believing in that crap is a serious thing. Homeopathy is far too widely believed in the Netherlands.
I think medical school should teach at least one lesson on people’s beliefs in non-science based woo affecting health, it’s weird how little they sometimes seem to know. I spoke to a doctor friend recently who didn’t really know what homeopathy was, or how ridiculous it is. He just vaguely thought that it was some sort of medicine he didn’t practice but might have merits. I explained the main ideas and he was quite shocked.
I’m glad my GP shoots me a sideways glance when I mention I put tea tree oil cream on something. Her face for that sort of thing is priceless. I imagine she’d fall off her chair if I said anything about Mayans. Good GP!
I don’t have a car so I am limited in where I can go to see a doctor. I have been seeing my pcp for over three years now. When I first went there I noticed the patients in the waiting room looked really “weird”. It reminded me of an inner city clinic. He was very spacy and would forget what he was going to do. I had to remind him all the time. He started prescribing me controlled substances for pain and I am probably addicted to them now. He has increased my dosage and my pharmacist gives me “that look.” I realize now that most of the patients are there to get their “fix.” I have seen other doctors who overprescribe pain meds lose their job but he probably won’t because of his race.
Exactly. The only thing I could think of was that doesn’t want to submit a claim to an insurer she’s not familiar with. Other than this, how would she even know? Most of the things she does are not covered by insurance anyway.
My immediate thought was, aside from the basic hostility, would she turn down a 24 year old college student still able to be on a parent’s insurance, because his coverage is thanks to Obamacare?
At any rate, her clumsy attempt to inject politics into medicine lost her a customer.
But you are very correct with your version also. 
