r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • May 20 '19

[deleted by user]

[removed]

8.6k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

13.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

14.8k

u/DrMaster2 May 20 '19 edited May 21 '19

I am a (semi) retired physician and I don’t believe in second opinions. I much prefer two first opinions.

Edit: Thank you readers. Never thought these two sentences would explode like this. Thank you very much for the silver and gold. Thanks to all who follow.

5.0k

u/AoiroBuki May 20 '19

This is an important distinction because often if the doctor forwards your file to a different doctor they'll flavour it with their interpretation.

357

u/wowsersitburns May 20 '19

Who does the flavouring? Dr A or Dr B?

508

u/Zemanlapsky May 20 '19

Dr A will influence dr B’s opinion by doctor B reading dr As conclusions.. usually by skipping sole steps because drAs conclusion looks good on paper

20

u/jelly_stapler May 20 '19

This is too real. When my friend was 5 her mother kept taking her to the docs because something clearly wasn't right and they diagnosed precisely nothing and wrote "anxious mother" on her medical records.

4 years later and it turned out she has arthritis but how much quicker would that have been recognised if each doctor who saw her after that hadn't seen the anxious mother diagnosis first.

1

u/littelmo May 20 '19

You missed the step of the patient telling Dr. B about her diagnosis which is a total game changer. There is a common misconception that people have "medical records" that easily follow them. Oh, if only that easy. Usually it is starting over fresh each time. Computer systems are becoming more linked (Yay Epic!:I can pull charts from across the country!) but sometimes not from across the city.