alywest
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- Joined
- Apr 19, 2017
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- 1,028
Unfortunately, it does not matter much how good they are as a person. All of them undergo an extensive "liability reduction" training at the beginning of their residency and even as students, which is then repeated as often as every quarter. The primary purpose of the hospital is NOT your well-being, it is to avoid getting sued. And adhering to FDA regulations is the best way to ensure no suit succeeds as it will be deemed "standard of care" even if it kills you quite reliably. George Bernard Shaw wrote a great piece on this titled "The Doctor's Dilemma":
The Doctor's Dilemma, by George Bernard Shaw : PREFACE ON DOCTORS
"...All that can be said for medical popularity is that until there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it. Moliere saw through the doctors; but he had to call them in just the same. Napoleon had no illusions about them; but he had to die under their treatment just as much as the most credulous ignoramus that ever paid sixpence for a bottle of strong medicine. In this predicament most people, to save themselves from unbearable mistrust and misery, or from being driven by their conscience into actual conflict with the law, fall back on the old rule that if you cannot have what you believe in you must believe in what you have. When your child is ill or your wife dying, and you happen to be very fond of them, or even when, if you are not fond of them, you are human enough to forget every personal grudge before the spectacle of a fellow creature in pain or peril, what you want is comfort, reassurance, something to clutch at, were it but a straw. This the doctor brings you. You have a wildly urgent feeling that something must be done; and the doctor does something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient; but you do not know that; and the doctor assures you that all that human skill could do has been done. And nobody has the brutality to say to the newly bereft father, mother, husband, wife, brother, or sister, “You have killed your lost darling by your credulity.”"
Such true words. Thank you for sharing that! After my child had open heart surgery and had to stay in the CICU, I can say that this is all so true. You want to believe that the doctors know best and will figure it all out, but it's not one-size-fits-all as much as they seem to want to treat it that way, but I think when you get to such extremes as the CICU the nurses and doctors are so used to not being able to do anything for so many that they almost have an ambiguous attitude. All they seemed to know how to do was pump him with 200 different types of medication, I didn't really know what else they did. Gave me sad looks when his o2 saturation levels weren't increasing from the low 80's. Nothing like spending a week in the CICU to make you question everything about the medical world. Fortunately he turned around and he's perfectly healed.