We’ve written so much about the problems in dealing with the medical profession – but are there any solutions?
We believe that there are, but they are not likely to be provided by anyone connected to the medical profession, or anyone connected to the Berejiklian government – most of the work we have to do ourselves.
Firstly, we believe that people have to realise that there are three skills or sets of skills that are entirely different:-
- The skill of analysing what’s wrong with people who have health problems, i.e. diagnosis.
- The skill of deciding who’s best at treating people with particular health problems, i.e. which specialist is likely to be the best for people to see if they have particular health problems that have been decided upon.
- The skills that various specialists have in treating/helping people with particular health problems.
From this, it follows that there are three steps each us of us should follow if we have health problems – the first one being that we should find someone who we feel we can trust to tell us what’s wrong with us.
Of course, in NSW, it’s GPs who are supposed to fill this role, and in some cases it’s easy for them to say what’s wrong with us but in others it’s very difficult. And, in our experience, if it’s at all difficult, we are very lucky, in NSW, to be able to find a GP who’s really helpful, both in telling us what’s wrong with us and who’s best to treat/help us. In such cases, it’s best to send emails to any specialists whose names the GP suggests, asking if treating/helping people with your symptoms are “within their areas of specialisation.”
One of our readers reports that one particular GP told him that tests on him had disclosed that he had problems that involved “life and death matters,” and gave him the names of two specialists he could refer him to. And when he sent them the emails we’ve suggested above, one of them replied saying that treating people with those problems was NOT within her areas of specialisation, and the other replied that it wasn’t a life and death matter at all, and not to worry about it.
In relation to this our reader considers that he was very lucky that this second specialist was so honest – in his experience, a lot of specialists would have got him to come for a face to face consultation to be told this, involving him in inconvenience and expense.
Needless to say, our reader says that he’s moved on from that particular GP.
More later.
