this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Well human doctors have a history of coming into the appointment, ignoring all the things I written and the nurse/assistant wrote, ask me to repeat everything, then cut me off every sentence to give me a answer.
Many are also old boomer doctors who were taught black people have higher pain tolerance, and other inaccuracies about non-caucasians. I have some friends who did drug tests before a casual visit because they "fit a profile".
We’re actually trained not to just use what the roomer wrote. The reason is that what the receptionist writes and roomer writes can be inaccurate, and inaccuracies can multiply each time they’re transcribed.
For example, the call center might write “pain in testicle,” and then the roomer might write “lump in left testicle for 2 weeks” and then the patient tells me the lump has been in the right testicle for 3-4 weeks. If we just all copied the original note, we might be working with the wrong symptoms or wrong location. And asking questions assuming the notes are 100% accurate can lead a patient into giving us inaccurate answers, which is a much lower risk if we ask open-ended questions and let you fill them in. We do read the roomer’s notes, but our documentation is much better if we are getting the information directly from you rather than playing telephone.
As for cutting people off, I can’t speak for your individual doctors, other than to say there is a certain personality type who will answer every question (even yes/no questions) with a 1-2 minute meandering answer. And if we have 20 questions to get through, we simply can’t ask every patient for the rest of the day to wait an extra 20-40 minutes just to avoid cutting people off. If your doctor is doing that even when you’re giving a 1 sentence answer, though, you may need to look for a new one.
I'm a second year medical student, and those boomer doctors are what I will avoid being at any cost. I currently spend a fair amount of time and effort challenging some of my professors and classmates on their attitudes and assumptions regarding health needs and healthcare discrepancies for racial minorities, low SES patients, and LGBTQ+ patients.
Doctors are also terrible at keeping up to date. You can judge how out of date a doctor's cholesterol knowledge is: