Medical trust
Medical trust
Hi Rick --
My take: you SHOULDN'T "trust" medical personnel (other than basic human respect and courtesy) nor should they expect it (which seems to be the harder part sometimes, for deep-seated sociological reasons, not technical or medical ones). Nor would I mistrust them. I would simply go pro-active: that is, do your own research, ask questions, familiarize yourself with the vocabularly, get second opinions.*
You won't learn enough to become a medical practitioner yourself or to replace their critical decision processes (unless you decide afterwards to go for a second career! -- which a tiny fraction actually do.) But that isn't the point. The point is to become part of the information loop and a part of the decision process. You have every right to do that (who has got a bigger stake in your health than you, anyway?), and your doing so has the effect of keeping the other "stakeholders" honest and faithful to their own roles. They are your advisors and your executive staff (not to speak of your employees!), though they have to be granted a good deal of discretion because of circumstances and technical considerations. But they also doggone well have to report to you. At times, you will simply accept their information and recommendations. At times, you request and choose among options. At times you suggest some yourself or ask your medical person to check out something that s/he hasn't presented. And, on rare occasions (only made slightly more common in these transitional times by medical "hubris," I think), the medical practitioner is so resistent that you have to terminate the relationship (amicably).
The advantage of this modus operandi, I find, is that it really does help to make people more responsible to their roles, including and especially our medical staff. So I tend to take the reactions of cardiologists and surgeons to this sort of scenario as a criterion for continuing to retain their services or, on the contrary, politely thanking them for their assistance and exiting stage left. The best respond very well, I think -- and rise to the challenge of working with a patient who is a colleage, rather than ruling the roost and giving papal pronouncements.
It's a skill we all have to learn bit by bit, since we've been mostly socialized to the simple supremacy of physicians in matters regarding health -- a sort of monarchial model of governance. Believe me (as you probably know), nurses are chafing a lot under the regime as well!
When being treated for amoebic dysentery and other tropical infections in France some twenty-five years ago, I found that nation a bit ahead of us on the medical consumer "spunkiness" front. There was (perhaps still is?) a wonderful national organization of medical consumers called ... "Impatients"!
Peter
* Should note that this attitude is endemic (maybe exaggerated) among adult educators like myself. WE sometimes joke that the motto of our profession should be "Last year I couldn't even spell 'agronomist' and now I ARE one!"
