An individual contacted me about a recent encounter between him and his physician that just didn't seem right. This patient was ...

heres-what-happens-when-a-doctor-lies

Here’s What Happens When A Doctor Lies

a patient suffering with hip pain seeks treatment from their physician who not only neglects to perform a physical exam but lies about in their notes this is bad medicine you recently went to see your doctor uh because you were having some pain tell me about that pain i had gone to the doctor after two weeks ish of having some lower back hamstring pain now this doctor do they work at a renowned institution are they an academic what kind of doctor are we talking about here my doctor is a well-respected physician a highly respected hospital institution a lot of folks under him also takes a role in management and also academics what has your relationship been like so far positive negative any issues along the way it's been a positive relationship until i as a patient needed something that required investigation and more than just emails and more than a quick visit or a blood test so when it was time for your appointment take me through that experience i explained that i had an athletic injury i wanted him to ask me to take my shirt off maybe or bend down or do something so i actually physically got up out of the exam chair as a way to sort of implicitly say it's okay i'm okay if you want to take a look at anything it is absolutely ridiculous that a patient needs to insinuate hint at the fact that a doctor needs to perform a physical exam did you expect for him to want to do a physical exam i had hoped and i did expect it yes i was saying to myself once he takes a look at me he'll be able to tell me what's wrong but i didn't get that not every medical visit needs a full comprehensive physical exam this is true in fact just speaking with a patient you could tell if they're alert oriented that being said for a musculoskeletal problem you need to do a physical exam the doctor didn't perform a physical exam how was he able to begin making a diagnosis or an assessment or a plan yeah well we had a discussion and once i got up out of the chair i voluntarily did uh some movements to show things that i was able to do and things that hurt again i did those things to almost suggest like maybe there's something else you want to take a look at what the patient's talking about here are special tests we actually do special tests to see if certain pain pops up if certain sounds are made by the body in order to figure out where the ailment is coming from and after i did those things i was prescribed what i would call a very general prescription for overall pain in addition to the medication did your doctor give you any kind of imaging to do i got a mri of my lower back and i follow that immediately rushing to do an mri is one of the biggest mistakes i see young doctors make in their careers but also experienced doctors that are treating vip patients who want answers quick the problem with getting an mri too soon is that oftentimes you'll see findings on an mri that are actually not contributing to the problem at hand why do you think the doctor ordered a low back mri when your pain was actually at your hip well part of me thinks it's because they may have been busy and didn't have the time to examine me with their hands we need to re-evaluate especially in the field of primary care how much time is given to doctors to spend with patients because if ultimately we keep shortening that time and asking doctors to do more the only person that really suffers is the patient do you think had they had the time they would have known where your pain was what i would hope for is that if i come into an office with pain and i'm able to point to it that someone else is able to touch it someone else is able to look at it someone else is able to talk to me about it i think it goes to show the failure of the health care system not this individual doctor that we're actually encouraging doctors to spend less time with patients focus more on computers and typing in electronic medical records and making sure we're box checking as opposed to caring about the patient sitting in front of us and making the correct diagnosis with the art of the physical exam how accurate do you think your doctor's quote-unquote diagnosis is without doing a physical exam for me it felt like there was some box checking this patient has this issue here's the solution without a lot of personalization i know he was a little late for our own exam he was probably running late with others back pain is not going to kill anybody you know bucks check it and move on back pain can kill somebody a missed pile of nephritis an infection of the kidneys a kidney stone causing a blockage leading to hydronephrosis in fact you can catch a tumor early through back pain but you won't know the signs of an infection of a tumor unless you do the physical exam once you got the result of the mri what was it and how did you feel the results left me feeling a little bit better because i knew that there was nothing wrong with my back but i was left with wonder because as i said the mri didn't include my hip when i got no information on my hip i was worried because i said to myself well i probably still can't go back to the gym while failing to perform a physical exam on a patient suffering with pain is poor form it's not nearly as surprising as what happened next when you went back into your chart after that visit uh did you find anything in there that surprised you i did i found a full assessment and note about my visit what it was prescribed and also a physical exam which didn't happen the doctor lied how did you feel seeing that there was a physical exam documented on this legal paperwork and it never happened i i almost wanted to send an email saying something about it but i just didn't and i'm sure a lot of people don't how does that make you feel about the health care system it tells me that some things need fixing it tells me that patients need to speak up doctors need to be educated about how they interact with patients and patients need to be taught how to ask doctors questions sometimes if they're uncomfortable this emphasis should fall only on doctors while yes we want to educate individual patients about strategies on how to deal with bad doctors or negative experiences with health care the real goal is to make system-wide changes because this is a systemic failure does this discourage you for seeking care for your future conditions i'm not discouraged from seeking care it's just been ingrained in me if i have a problem i'm willing to go and ask a question about it but it does make me question the threshold of when i'll go back to the doctor if it's something that's simple or i think it is i probably won't go this is the biggest loss of this whole situation yes there was a misdiagnosis and yes the patient didn't recover as quickly as they could have the fact is that this patient now will hold off getting medical care in certain instances potentially worsening their situation potentially letting a cancer become more advanced because of this negative outcome this is terrible terrible terrible stuff so the doctor gave you a prescription did the mri did your pain improve no my pain pretty much stayed the same after my appointment and what did you do then i actually went to another doctor getting a second opinion from another doctor is a patient's right remember medicine is as much art as it is a science so two doctors can come to two different conclusions and have two different treatment plans and they could both be right so a second opinion is crucial and was that experience any better that experience was a 180 from the other uh practice that i was at i made an appointment went in to see the physician who really didn't have a lot of history on me we talked a little bit and to my surprise he immediately started to perform a physical exam on me i was stunned and so they did a physical exam and what do they find he told me and i don't really remember the exact issue but that i had a hip problem from the athletic injury the doctor prescribed me uh physical therapy and have you improved since then a ton i've gone i've gone to the physical therapist per the regimen that was prescribed and i'm slowly recovering probably about 90 now you mentioned to me earlier that this doctor that you went to for the second time wasn't from an esteemed institution wasn't wearing a buttoned-up shiny white coat what does that tell you it tells me all that glitters is not gold the first doctor fancy degrees on the wall pictures with famous people the second doctor it was a 180. and to my surprise i got a physical exam at this place no glitter but gold service hands-off doctors aren't the only kind of bad doctors out there in fact i played six more of them right here in this video make sure to check that out as always stay happy and healthy [Music]

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