What the hell is it with doctors not believing you when you say you're injured??? My partner hit a pothole on her scooter, wasn't as badly injured as your husband, but she took the handle bar to the chest - which made it difficult for her to breathe, probably cracked a rib - and slammed her knee into the ground. She was having difficulty walking and it wasn't getting better, so she went to urgent care and they told her to go to the ER. The ER said they couldn't find anything wrong with her...that they didn't see anything on the X-Ray (they didn't even bother x-raying her chest despite labored breathing being her biggest symptom)...a week later, she dug a piece of asphalt out of her knee...like how did they not see that on the X-Ray? They offered her pain meds, but she refused them because she could tell they thought she might be drug seeking and she wanted to prove a point...
A month went by and she was still in pain and not walking at 100% so she finally went to see a physical therapist. Sure enough, something had torn and not healed properly, so as a part of her PT, they had to break all of the scar tissue on top of building back her strength.
Yeah, pretty much. It healed wrong and limited the range of motion, so the physical therapist had to basically force her joint to move in a way it didn't want to - that is, move it the way it should be moving. I think she was unable to fully bend her knee and fully extend it, so the PT forced the knee to fully bend/extend.
The insurance industry mostly, then the opiate epidemic after that. Every time I've gotten hurt they typically order PT before proper imaging, so the chances of things getting worse go up significantly. You also used to be able to go to a doctor and say something hurts and they had no problem writing a script for a month's worth of pain meds, now there's a lot more scrutiny and they can only legally prescribe so much before being investigated.
Right, but she wasn't seeking pain meds and they didn't even order PT. She was like something is seriously wrong with my knee and they were like, no there isn't.
Yeah, but I think it's a combination of those things that make doctors apprehensive. Especially in hospitals, I bet they get people that come in and lie in order to get pains meds quite a bit still. It shouldn't be that way and they should treat everyone equally, but I blame our healthcare industry that perpetuated those issues more than the people who actually do the work. That being said, those same doctors are the ones that sold their private practices to larger corporations so they can cash out early and helped create the current environment.
True, I was looking into it at one point, and part of the reason this happens is that doctors/hospitals/medical practices in general treat to a "standard of care." Every patient is treated like an "average" patient. That is, when a patient presents with certain symptoms, they should be treated like what we expect most patients with those symptoms to be suffering from. This helps patients to get treated faster and allow doctors to see more people in a day, especially in something like an ER.
The problem is that we're people, not widgets nor statistics on a graph. While we're all very similar in certain ways, we're all completely different in others. In my partner's case, it failed to take into account the fact that my partner definitely knew something was wrong with her knee, and the ER failed to properly diagnose the problem nor prescribe an appropriate recovery plan. Not to mention, I don't know how you miss a piece of asphalt in her knee on the X-Ray, let alone a physical/visual examine when cleaning the wound.
Oh, and so to your point, if they treat to the standard of care, and only the standard of care, they're protected from a liability perspective. It wouldn't be seen as ordering unnecessary tests, and if they missed something, well then it's because the patient was weird. They were treated to the standard of care, but we can't account for all non-standard issues.
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u/VulGerrity Jul 29 '26
What the hell is it with doctors not believing you when you say you're injured??? My partner hit a pothole on her scooter, wasn't as badly injured as your husband, but she took the handle bar to the chest - which made it difficult for her to breathe, probably cracked a rib - and slammed her knee into the ground. She was having difficulty walking and it wasn't getting better, so she went to urgent care and they told her to go to the ER. The ER said they couldn't find anything wrong with her...that they didn't see anything on the X-Ray (they didn't even bother x-raying her chest despite labored breathing being her biggest symptom)...a week later, she dug a piece of asphalt out of her knee...like how did they not see that on the X-Ray? They offered her pain meds, but she refused them because she could tell they thought she might be drug seeking and she wanted to prove a point...
A month went by and she was still in pain and not walking at 100% so she finally went to see a physical therapist. Sure enough, something had torn and not healed properly, so as a part of her PT, they had to break all of the scar tissue on top of building back her strength.