How To Spot A BAD Doctor

 

    I have had the pleasure in my life to have had good experiences going to a new doctor. My experiences of having a BAD doctor outnumber the experiences of having a GOOD doctor.

    I happen to have back problems and in my efforts to find help for the problem, I have encountered HORRIBLE doctors!

    My frustrastion and anger was off the charts. I felt so helpless in my health care desparation. I knew deep within me the DOCTOR did not seem as CONCERNED with my excrutiating back pain as I was. I was ready to give up. My doctor visits left me feeling EXHAUSTED. I felt like I was in a FIGHT just for the doctor to LISTEN to what MY health complaints were.

    After one very disappointing doctor visit to a new doctor, I know I got Covid the next day due to the stress and hopelessness of a doctor dismissing me and being condescending to me as he quickly entered and exited my patient room. My immune system had to be as low as I felt that day. Thus COVID!

    I had had enough! I thought back to the majority of my doctor visits to see if there was a common DENOMINATOR. There was. First, I will give several signs of a bad doctor according to my RESEARCH before I go on about my personal findings about my BAD experiences with doctors:

Your doctor has a bad bedside manner.

Your doctor is late.

You aren't called with test results.

Your doctor’s record is blemished.

Your doctor has trouble with boundaries.

Your doctor has poor diagnostic skills.

Your doctor asks personal questions.

Your doctor is narrow-minded about alternative therapies.

7 Signs of a Bad Doctor:

• The office staff is unprofessional.
• Your doctor isn't listening to you.
• You can't get in touch with them.
• You don't know what's going on.
• Your doctor is rude or condescending.
• Your doctor seems rushed.
• They don't offer helpful alternatives.

****MY advice for you to FLEE is a waiting room full of people waiting for HOURS to see the doctor. The doctor, his employees, his practice, does not RESPECT YOU from the get go. DO NOT pay or see a doctor who makes his patients WAIT forever in the waiting room. SIMPLE! 

    Now for my journey. The FIRST common denominator was, the majority of the doctors were WHITE MALES. And RACE does make a difference in the healthcare system. Nearly 64 percent of active physicians were White, 20.6 percent were Asian, 6.9 percent were Hispanic, and 5.7 percent were Black or African American, as of January 17, 2023. In 2018,Whites were 60% of the U.S. population and approximately 57% of physicians. Diversity knowledge is needed to be able to address many patient's needs as I will get into later.

     This is NOT the race card being played. It is just the facts of being ill and in need of treatment for your health concerns while being BLACK. I have always FELT a white man could not relate to the medical concerns of a BLACK WOMAN. I just felt it in my gut, but continued on. 

    SECOND, the AGE of a doctor makes a difference. In 2018, among White physicians, males were the vast majority of those age 65 years and over (79.3%) and of those ages 55-64 years (71.5%). A little more than half of White physicians age 34 and younger were females (50.6%). Among White physicians age 35 and over, males made up a larger percentage of the workforce than females. This percentage increased with age. New research published last week in the Journal of Modern Medicine, which analyzed a large number of physicians according to age, sex and race, showed that older white male doctors (age greater than 60) in a number of different specialties, overwhelmingly had BETTER patient outcomes and patient satisfaction, than any other demographic.

     Now let's look how race plays a role in healthcare since I am a minority.

    Racial and ethnic disparities vary by group: For about 40% of quality measures, Blacks (82 of 202) and American Indians and Alaska Natives (47 of 116) received worse care than Whites. For more than one-third of quality measures, Hispanics (61 of 177) received worse care than Whites, according to NHQDR. The annual National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (NHQDR) is mandated by Congress to provide a comprehensive overview of the quality of healthcare received by the general U.S. population and disparities in care experienced by different racial and socioeconomic groups. ALL groups receive worse care than WHITE people.

     When you throw in a person's income, things can get even worse. For the most recent year, people in poor households had worse access to care than people in high-income households for 90% of access measures. Blacks had worse access to care than Whites for 48% of access measures. Asians had worse access to care than Whites for 32% of access measures. Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (NPHIs) had worse access to care than Whites for 25% of access measures. American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) had worse access to care than Whites for 55% of access measures. Hispanics had worse access to care than non-Hispanic Whites for 65% of access measures.

    In 2017, Blacks (73.4%), Asians (70.1%), and AI/ANs (67.5%) were less likely than Whites (76.8%) to have a usual primary care provider. In 2017, Blacks (20.4%) and Asians (24.3%) who needed to see a SPECIALIST were more likely than Whites (14.2%) to report that they sometimes or NEVER found it easy to get the appointment. People of color can't even get appointments or referrals. It's not in our heads. 

    You know what else is not in OUR heads? Many doctors don't seem to care very much about their patients, are somewhat mean to their patients, and even seem as they may not know or understand what's going on with the patient. Our Spidey senses are RIGHT.

''There have been estimates that as many as 5 to 15 percent of doctors are not fully competent to practice medicine, either from a deficiency of medical skills or because of impairment from drugs, alcohol or mental illness,'' said Dr. Richard Jay Feinstein, former chairman of the Florida State Medical Board.Mar 24, 1985.

    The reason why doctors can be condescending is that they were probably jerks to begin with, rationalizing that getting into medical school is very competitive and that students are ranked according to test scores, not on how nice they are. Successful pre-meds are generally type A personalities with a fierce competitive nature, and what kind of person would sign up for a career where they are harassed, blamed, required to do endless paperwork of indeterminate usefulness, denied regular sleep, and endure hostility from staff, coworkers, family members, and error-prone colleagues? A person with a pretty thick skin and a high tolerance for sadism and/or masochism…also known as a jerk. YES. If you FEEL your doctor is a jerk than he probably is one.

    When I speak of racism in the medical field it is not doctors not wanting to treat you because of your color. It is something else on an entirely different level.

    Doctors tend to believe: BLACK PEOPLE HAVE A HIGH TOLERANCE FOR PAIN. No I don't. I'm just as delicate as the blonde blue eyed white woman!!

    When false ideas of pain tolerance based on RACE are present within people's minds, they lead to detrimental consequences even if those who believe in them have no explicitly prejudiced beliefs, as was discovered by researchers. In a study on racial bias in pain assessments, a demonstrated correlation between racial bias in pain assessment and subsequent pain treatment suggestions was found. It was also found that in both a significant number of laypersons and those with medical training, incorrect beliefs about differences between black and white people on a BIOLOGICAL level were held.

     Beliefs such as these can lead to the differential treatment of patients on the basis of their race. In a research paper which was written by Staton et al., doctors were shown to have a higher probability of UNDERESTIMATIN the pain INTENSITY that black patients were feeling. In the early 2000's multiple studies were able to demonstrate discrepancies in the PAIN TREATMENT of black patients as compared to the pain treatment of white patients. From children to adults, differences were as much as black patients only taking HALF of the amount of pain medications as white patients were taking.

    Diagnostic errors result in a staggering toll of harm and patient deaths with nearly one in twenty patients—or 12 million adults in the United States—experiencing a diagnostic error each year. WOMEN and Black patients are more likely to experience ADVERSE events during primary care. Overall, research suggests that some vulnerable social groups are more likely to be harmed by diagnosis error.

     Further, research has found that, when compared to White patients, ethnic minorities have a greater chance of experiencing harm and adverse consequences due to errors in the testing process, which includes ordering the test, implementing the test, performing the test, reporting results to the clinician, clinician responding to the results, notifying the patient of the results and following up.

     One study reviewed the association between the type of testing error and the occurrence of adverse outcomes and found an important association across racial and ethnic groups. This research revealed that ERRORS based on test implementation were almost DOUBLE within minority groups in comparison with non-Hispanic Whites (32% as opposed to 18%). Overall, the study found minority patients were more likely to experience an adverse event. The study revealed that minority patients are THREE times more likely to experience an adverse event due to the testing process than a White patient.

     OKAY. I'm Black. What else is working against me? Oh Yeah, I'm a woman. The THIRD thing that matters in healthcare is SEX.

    A study at Johns Hopkins University found that emergency room doctors commonly miss strokes among women, minorities, and patients under age forty-five. Unfortunately, each year “doctors overlook or discount the early signs of potentially disabling strokes in tens of thousands of Americans.” Of those overlooked, women, minorities, and younger patients are disproportionately sent home, despite complaints of dizziness or headaches. Additional research has found that WOMEN under the age of fifty-five were almost SEVEN times more likely than men in the same age group to be sent home from the hospital in the middle of experiencing certain heart problems. The results of these studies suggest that race and gender, whether implicitly or explicitly, may play a role in how physicians decide who to treat and who to send home. 

    Not only have doctors, scientists and researchers mostly been WHITE MEN, but most of the cells, animals, and humans studied in medical science have also been MALE: most of the advances we have seen in medicine have come from the study of MALE biology. Dr Janine Austin Clayton, an associate director for women’s health research at the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH), told the New York Times that the result is: “We literally know less about every aspect of FEMALE biology compared to male biology.” Diseases presenting DIFFERENTLY in women are often missed or misdiagnosed, and those affecting mainly women remain largely a mystery: understudied, undertreated and frequently misdiagnosed or undiagnosed.

    Historically, medical education and research have been MALE-focused, specifically on the WHITE gendered male. Within medicine there exists a foundation of research conducted on the White gendered male, with the assumption that this data could simply be extrapolated to women and other racial and ethnic minorities. Research has also found physicians and medical institutions fail to offer equitable, unbiased, appropriate medical care for women. One reason for this failure is the presumption that women are “overly emotional.” Within our culture, women have long suffered from unfair stereotypes and dismissal of their concerns as hysteria or emotion, according to MEDICAL ERROR AND VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES by PHOEBE JEAN-PIERRE.

    So it is not so much about BAD DOCTORS, it's about understanding you are ENTITLED to competent healthcare by professional competent doctors who treat you with decency. If you FEEL, BELIEVE you are not being listened to or dismissed, do not continue to see that particular doctor. I know when it is an emergency, whatever doctor is in the emergency room is who you are going to see. But, there is a patient advocate you can request to speak with if you believe you are being treated less than and you can request to be seen by another doctor. Shop around for a primary care provider who is not overloaded with patients and imforms you to YOUR satisfaction regarding your treatments.

    I have decided to ditch the WHITE MALE DOCTOR. They never give me pain medication, they rush in and out of the room, and do have a tendency to dismiss my symptoms or give referals to departments that MAY be able to clear up my concerns.

    I just got tired of it all and after being so upset after a doctor's visit that I 100% believe I got COVID. I had to make a change.