I love reading books about people's jobs and Sick Notes by Tony Copperfield is a very good example of the genre. As the title suggests it's about the work of a GP and it's very funny - and sad. The people who really need the GP's services are almost always the ones who fail to keep their appointments. The surgery is often full of the worried well clutching Internet print outs. There are people with many symptoms - none of which fit any known disease and there are people who will talk about everything except the problem they really want dealt with. Women are far better than men at describing symptoms - especially pain. Men just know it hurts women will tell the GP when it started, what it's like, what makes it better and what makes it worse and what they think caused it.
Obviously this is a generalisation but I've read before that women are in general better at describing symptoms of any sort. There are sad cases in the book - the Type 1 Diabetic who is not using her insulin properly and the hypochondriac who does turn out to have something serious wrong with him. But the big thing to take from this book is that 90% of complaints will get better without any medical intervention at all and medical intervention may even make things worse. Your doctor's job is to keep you away from the hospital and away from all the expensive tests - not to save the NHS money but to allow your body to do what it does best - heal itself.
Should be required reading for all patients.
Obviously this is a generalisation but I've read before that women are in general better at describing symptoms of any sort. There are sad cases in the book - the Type 1 Diabetic who is not using her insulin properly and the hypochondriac who does turn out to have something serious wrong with him. But the big thing to take from this book is that 90% of complaints will get better without any medical intervention at all and medical intervention may even make things worse. Your doctor's job is to keep you away from the hospital and away from all the expensive tests - not to save the NHS money but to allow your body to do what it does best - heal itself.
Should be required reading for all patients.
5 comments:
Thank goodness for an expert who isn't trying to convince us to be worried sick (literally) about the latest survey that demonstrates that life is fatal - that's right, it is, and worrying about it will make it worse, if anything.
I love these down to earth books by GPs - they tell me far more about how to treat any illness and how common - or not- certain illnesses are. If you read some sections of the media you would think some illnesses are at epidemic proportions. He commented that whenever an article appears in a newspaper, magazine or on TV he knows that at least 25% of his patients will be seeing him because they think they've got that illness or syndrome! Evene if it is so rare that he hasn;t seen a case in 20 years.
I always work on the principle that I will not go to the doctor unless I've had something for at least a week.
Quite. I got slightly cross with the pharmacist in Boots today when I collected my prescription - Was I all right with my tablets? Yes, and if I wasn't, I'd be off to my GP if it persisted. Was I doing anything with my diet to help control my blood pressure? Well, again, that's something I discuss with her, thanks (we don't, actually - she trusts me, thank heavens). Oh, but we have a form we have to fill in. Tough - talk about a fuss! I daresay it's trying to be helpful, but to my mind it's encouraging people to just what you've described...
I'm so glad our doctors do their own dispensing - it saves all that!! In the main they don't lecture either - they just say - 'your life, your choice'. There are too many busy bodies around trying to tell us what we should do with our health IMO
Well, yes - and it can't be doing anyone's blood pressure much good...
which is maybe what I have to say.
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