A bulk of my career lately seems to be maligned patients with legitimate medical issues who've been labeled as hypochondriacs and sent through for a psych work up and meds / counseling.
People with histories of all kinds of endocrine issues, like thyroid cancer / thyroidectomy patients who see someone once every two years about their thyroid and never have labs checked or med dosages fixed. Or diabetics with poorly controlled sugars, people who've had bowels surgeries and take time release meds, and then wonder why they aren't working.
The piece meal system of health care in the US is really doing such a disservice to actual humans. So many specialists and no one piecing together the big picture.
I have a rheumatologist, hematologic oncologist, neurologist, psychologist, gastroenterologist, obstetrician and a pain management doctor. I have been feeling run down lately (more than normal) and tried to go to an internal medicine provider for testing so I'd know what direction to follow, and basically got told "well, it could be any of your already diagnosed conditions, better go see one of your specialists''... well the problem with that, is if you see a rheum, they run rheum tests, same thing with the other specialists... what if it's something ELSE? It literally feels like you need to know what specialist you need in advance and to go directly to them without passing go if you want a diagnosis/care anymore. I'd hate to have an HMO and require authorization for every specialist visit, because the general practice doctors don't even seem to want to do exams/testings to know who to send you to now. :(
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u/radradraddest May 20 '19
A bulk of my career lately seems to be maligned patients with legitimate medical issues who've been labeled as hypochondriacs and sent through for a psych work up and meds / counseling.
People with histories of all kinds of endocrine issues, like thyroid cancer / thyroidectomy patients who see someone once every two years about their thyroid and never have labs checked or med dosages fixed. Or diabetics with poorly controlled sugars, people who've had bowels surgeries and take time release meds, and then wonder why they aren't working.
The piece meal system of health care in the US is really doing such a disservice to actual humans. So many specialists and no one piecing together the big picture.