Just meet the most @#$% Doctor

[SeerSGB]

Mom had a bad rash across her face into her eyes. Took her to the walk-in clinic. We asked to see the head GP in the clinic but it was his off day. Got the new young (supposed) GP that's working there...WTH, when did KGB become a medical textbook.

I shit you not, while she was in the room with mom she used KGB to look up my mother's symptoms. Do you know how fucking unnerving it is to have a doctor pull out their blackberry and say "hold on," then start texting KGB. How do I know it was KGB and not a medical reference? She showed us the fucking phone. Then says, "well it could be chicken pox, or shingles, or I don't know something else, says it could be a lot of things. Just put some gold-bond on it and if it doesn't clear up...I don't know, come back in a few days or just go to the ER."

"Mom asked her about it being a drug reaction (they just switched up her meds and the last time they did she had some weird skin rashes) and the girl shrugs and says, "I dunno could be...maybe...I'm not really up on that kind of stuff."

Yeah, thanks Doc, we just paid you a $80 copay for shit we could have done on fucking Google at home

She didn't know shit, how she got a medical license is beyond me.

And no, no names of the clinic before anyone asks. Mom's going to call around in the morning and see who to report the "doctor" too, and call the head of the clinic and report her there too.

Is this a new thing with docs? Or did I miss out on something with my insistence to stick with Doctors that had been in practice for several years?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

"KGB"?

 

[SeerSGB]

"KGB"?

Wiki Link

542542 is an "Ask Anything 2-way text service", whereby United States customers can submit questions via SMS (text) message. They will then receive another text message containing the answer for $0.99. Questions are not limited to traditional information assistance, but may cover any facet of knowledge or even speculation

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I had these visions of you two being taken to the Russian gulag for treatment. "So, you have rashings the skin? You support traitor to the Soviet motherland!"

 

[Amaris]

^ It's a lot like ChaCha, it's a human powered answer engine for mobile phones.

 

[scotpens]

I had these visions of you two being taken to the Russian gulag for treatment. “So, you have rashings the skin? You support traitor to the Soviet motherland!”

In Soviet Russia, skin rash finds YOU!

I suppose younger folks who don't remember the Cold War era might not automatically think “Soviet spies and secret police” when they hear “KGB.”

And yes, that doctor, if that's what she was, should be reported to her superiors. Maybe she just plays a doctor on television.

 

[Canadave]

I had these visions of you two being taken to the Russian gulag for treatment. “So, you have rashings the skin? You support traitor to the Soviet motherland!”

In Soviet Russia, skin rash finds YOU!

I suppose younger folks who don't remember the Cold War era might not automatically think “Soviet secret police” when they hear “KGB.”

I dunno, I was born in '87, and I'd guess that a significant part of my generation would know that the KGB = Soviets. If nothing else, Bond movies and the like certainly keep the name alive.

 

[JonathonWally]

If it was shingles, she would know, they would hurt like fuck. I got them back in March, right on my fucking ribs. The marks are still there, thank god they don't hurt so much anymore.

Honestly, I doubt most GPs would be able to identify a skin rash just by looking at it, see a dermatologist.

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

I had these visions of you two being taken to the Russian gulag for treatment. “So, you have rashings the skin? You support traitor to the Soviet motherland!”

In Soviet Russia, skin rash finds YOU!

I suppose younger folks who don't remember the Cold War era might not automatically think “Soviet spies and secret police” when they hear “KGB.”

And yes, that doctor, if that's what she was, should be reported to her superiors. Maybe she just plays a doctor on television.

No, she just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

If it was shingles, she would know, they would hurt like fuck. I got them back in March, right on my fucking ribs. The marks are still there, thank god they don't hurt so much anymore.

Also, shouldn't someone know if they had Chicken Pox before? One should have a good idea about both of those.

 

[captcalhoun]

glad i'm not the only one wondering what State Security had to do with diagnosing a rash...

 

[Tom Hendricks]

My wife is a physician, an OB/GYN and uses several iPhone/iPad apps to help her in her practice. She uses an App to check drug interactions. She has an App to wheel out due dates. She has never used KGB and would find it highly amusing that someone may have.

Mom had a bad rash across her face into her eyes. Took her to the walk-in clinic. We asked to see the head GP in the clinic but it was his off day. Got the new young (supposed) GP that's working there...WTH, when did KGB become a medical textbook.

I shit you not, while she was in the room with mom she used KGB to look up my mother's symptoms. Do you know how fucking unnerving it is to have a doctor pull out their blackberry and say "hold on," then start texting KGB. How do I know it was KGB and not a medical reference? She showed us the fucking phone. Then says, "well it could be chicken pox, or shingles, or I don't know something else, says it could be a lot of things. Just put some gold-bond on it and if it doesn't clear up...I don't know, come back in a few days or just go to the ER."

"Mom asked her about it being a drug reaction (they just switched up her meds and the last time they did she had some weird skin rashes) and the girl shrugs and says, "I dunno could be...maybe...I'm not really up on that kind of stuff."

Yeah, thanks Doc, we just paid you a $80 copay for shit we could have done on fucking Google at home

She didn't know shit, how she got a medical license is beyond me.

And no, no names of the clinic before anyone asks. Mom's going to call around in the morning and see who to report the "doctor" too, and call the head of the clinic and report her there too.

Is this a new thing with docs? Or did I miss out on something with my insistence to stick with Doctors that had been in practice for several years?

 

[Rett Mikhal]

I wonder if anyone has ever texted KGB "How may Entropy be reversed?".

Anyway, welcome to intelligence 2.0. Technology makes us dependent on electronic reference to the point we've become stupid and only know how to use search engines. Look at Tesla, he never used a reference book in his life, but if we're away from our digital encyclopedias we're pretty lost.

Subtraction by addition, I suppose.

 

[sojourner]

^Your confusing a knowledge base with intelligence.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Using any knowledge database isn't the problem here. Knowledge databases increase the doctor's resources and might speed his diagnosis. However, the main reason people don't diagnose themselves over the Internet is that doctors have learned for years, should know a lot about physiology and diseases and can apply knowledge correctly, whether it's coming from Google or from a medical knowledge base or from their training.

I heard about cases of rare diseases where no doctor could diagnose them, but the patient managed to find what the issue was himself using the Internet, went to the doctor with the information and got his problem solved. If he tried to cure himself he would fail, but the doctor's failure to use the new "knowledge 2.0" known as the Internet was a problem, too.

The problem here was that the doctor was incompetent (he should be thrown out), not that he used an unconventional source for information. Although KGB? It's the first time I hear about it, and it sounds insane, especially for such a purpose. If you're professional you should know how to dig the information yourself instead of asking questions at some service for lazy and/or incompetent.

 

[Holdfast]

I love that the abbreviation equals KGB. Great bit of marketing.

Anyway, I'm not entirely surprised; dermatology is boring (sorry to any dermatologists reading this!) and zillions of skin rashes look the same unless you're an expert on them. Many GPs - and doctors in general - are certainly not experts on random skin rashes!

The doctor using a service like KGB is absolutely pointless and stupid though; KGB will have access to basically the same resources as the GP so won't be able to advance the diagnosis forward, and in fact, the information she would get from KGB would be of less value than her initial first differential. This stupidity in using information actually touches on the topic being discussed here. There wasn't any point in her gathering more information, because it wouldn't have altered her management plan. That's a pretty clear mark of her relative inexperience.

Having said all that, using lay search engines like Google or Google Scholar is often quicker than accessing even an online medical reference database in some clinical situations because the search algorithms are much better. As long as you know what you're doing in terms of interpreting the information you find correctly and with due caution, it's fine. When faced with a difficult clinical situation, I've used it as a first step to exploring a topic, before doing a proper search through the standard reference texts. It really cuts down on the time needed.

And for things like drug interactions, nobody really bothers memorising those, beyond the common ones you see frequently. We always look them up in a book (or more commonly now, online) in a drug database.

It's like using wikipedia as a first stage to writing an essay. You wouldn't base the whole essay on it, but it's a quick rough and ready way to initially sketch out a framework to attack the topic. It's all about interpretation and correctly weighting information.

 

[JonathonWally]

I wonder if anyone has ever texted KGB "How may Entropy be reversed?".

Anyway, welcome to intelligence 2.0. Technology makes us dependent on electronic reference to the point we've become stupid and only know how to use search engines. Look at Tesla, he never used a reference book in his life, but if we're away from our digital encyclopedias we're pretty lost.

Subtraction by addition, I suppose.

Yes, absolutely, reference is for assholes, we should reinvent the wheel whenever we do anything.

Next time I show up at a patients house in the middle of the night and they're on 20 of those old people meds, I'll chuck out my pharmacology reference pocket-guide of interactions and tell them "hey, Tesla didn't need books".

Then, after I kill them and I'm on trial, my deposition will consist of "reference books are for fuckers"

 

[Sephiroth]

sounds like you need a good malpractice lawyer