I would imagine the expectation comes from them being very well compensated, and supposedly very well educated and trained experts that people entrust their current and future wellbeing to, and who try very hard (often successfully) to minimize their own accountability.

One would expect a nurse to know less about which medication is likely to produce the best outcome in a given patient than a doctor, but the opposite is often the case due to some mix of the average doctor’s ego, and their investment and presence around patients over prolonged periods.

Many doctors appear frustrated that patients exist, they’d rather just look at a list of symptoms and write a prescription without acknowledging the individual.

>I would imagine the expectation comes from them being very well compensated, and supposedly very well educated and trained experts that people entrust their current and future wellbeing to, and who try very hard (often successfully) to minimize their own accountability.

I just think this is delusional. Pay, and education, and accountability do very little to make them superhuman. similarly, just because people dont have good alternatives to doctors, doesnt make doctors good at their job or their expectations rational. That is wish casting, and not how the world works.

I think it is more realistic to think of them like a mechanic who you are asking for advice. They might shrug or give their best guess, but they aren't promising anything. At the end of the day, it is your car and your problem, not their problem. They might try to help, but they dont owe you anything.

I guess I dont think patients are entitled to results or anything else from doctors, besides trying not to leave them worse off and maybe a mild positive intent.

I replied to your other post in this chain, but felt like adding:

Does a bad mechanic leave you in physical pain and have the potential to leave you suffering worse than before you arrived?

Can you avoid the problem of a bad doctor by just getting a new body?

Remember that the origin of this discussion is in many doctors not believing a woman despite reasonable evidence to the contrary.

Nobody would be outraged if they still were broadly and even justifiably wary but put in ANY effort at all to attempt to at least humor the possibility she wasn't an alcoholic, especially after passing psych screening tests, however primitive.

And sure, she could have gone to doctors other than ER doctors, but that is why I mentioned my own experiences that it isn't very different with (at least some) specialists.

Going a bit back to the mechanic analogy, it's hard for people who are busy and suffering to make extremely well thought out and slow decisions in that state, especially if there's sometimes enough improvement they can seemingly be recovered.

I think the thing that gets me about this example is everyone comes into it with perfect hindsight, and then projects their own biases about lack of effort and care. If it was so obvious, then the woman should have been able to diagnose herself, or any of her family and acquaintances. It's not that clinicians didn't try to help, as some people claim. They gave her CT scans and psychiatric assessments try to figure it out, some of which she refused. It is easy to say that the doctor simply should have trusted her statements, and use them as a basis for further research, which may have identified the cause more quickly. However, people don't have an answer for how this would play out the other 999 times out of 1000 when the patient is lying or in psychiatric crisis. Armchair doctors say it would have been obvious if they trusted her and kept her overnight for observation. This ignores the fact that this is not what emergency departments are typically set up to do, if they did, they may have seen her blood alcohol decrease, consistent with her lying. For all we know, she left the emergency room each time with the recommendation to seek help from a specialist, but people fill in whatever narrative they want.

Regarding your questions, I do think both doctors and mechanics have a responsibility to try not to make things worse than if they had done nothing at all. I don't think the doctor is here made her condition worse.

If I have a broken car, it's my responsibility to fix or replace it, not the mechanics. If I don't like the service a mechanic offers, my choices are find a new one, do it myself, or go without.

I think people would be better served if they thought about doctors in the same manner.

Yes, people are frustrated at highly paid and educated specialists being paid large amounts of money by them while in severe pain, and sometimes not getting help.

Just like they're frustrated if they don't listen at a grade school comprehension level, which absolutely is not superhuman.

Are you autistic by any chance? If so, I recommend trying to think in terms of the suffering people experience specifically because of the circumstances and because of a common social treatment of distrust and inattention.

E.g. I'll be far more bothered by someone who pretends to listen then ignored me, or who actively accuses me of not feeling pain, than someone who merely does a bad job -- i didn't, for instance, complain about my first GI specialist who merely did a bad job but always paid attention and tried to work slightly more than a chatbot in terms of effort put.

And effort too there is relevant, especially someone in a context of great luxury and not insignificant "authority" (i lack a better term rn) afforded by their position.

Accurate grade school comprehension 100% of the time IS superhuman. However, I agree that some people probably half ass it and do worse than their best. I think it is fine to be frustrated when someone does a shitty job for you.

I think the interesting point for me is the "authority", or social part of it. This seems to be a projection from the patient, and then they get upset that doctors dont reciprocate.

This is what strikes me as screaming at the clouds. Respect, authority, and trust are in the eye of the beholder. To the degree that there is a mismatch between expectations and reality, the error is on patient for projecting a false reality. Then they are angry when reality doesn't match of with their imaginations.

I also think it is weird to place such broad expectations on doctors as a class of people, as if they are all the same. Some are great and some are shit. Most are somewhere in-between.

If the anger is that doctors are paid more, that doesnt make sense to me either, because it is just supply and demand, not some moral social quality of doctors that make them better humans, and therefore deserving of more luxury or financial success. It seems a weird special expectation that people have constructed for doctors. In contrast, Nobody has an elevated moral expectation of bankers just because they make more money.

I just think that people would be happier, and perhaps get better care if they based their expectations in reality.

You shouldnt view health as a responsibility you can outsource to a doctor. No doctor will care about your life more than you do. Doctors come in all levels of competency, and it is your job as owner of your body to shop around. Some people desperately want blind trust and freedom from responsibility, but if they go down that path, they are embracing a fantasy,