HDEirghidf
Dołączył: 10 Mar 2011
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Skąd: England
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 Wysłany: Czw 10:53, 24 Mar 2011 Temat postu: Jordan 11s Is Your Doctor Skimping on Giving You t |
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But in today's day and age -- when one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy is devoted to health care -- one has to wonder whether this oath still holds true.
Of course, doctors are human and they do make mistakes. But making a mistake is one thing. Knowingly not advising a patient because of:
Not enough time
Thoughts that the patient will not comply
Fear of malpractice
... is another. So when you go to visit your doctor,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], how likely is it that you're getting the best health advice you could receive?
"Dietary changes reinforced by a doctor's recommendation will make it even easier for patients to make simple changes that could add years to their lives," said Amy Joy Lanou, an assistant professor of health and wellness at the University of North Carolina and a senior nutrition scientist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
But donning the blue paper gown every year while your doctor listens to your heart, performs some routine blood tests and looks in your eyes, ears and nose is almost worthless, according to many studies.
Most of us know that certain lifestyle changes, eating more vegetables, not smoking and exercising,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], for instance, are good for us. However, doctors typically do not advise patients to adhere to these most basic health principles.
The Annual Physical is "Almost Worthless"
Dr. Britto brought up a good point. In the airline industry, pilots insisted that errors be studied and, as a result, airplane crashes are rare.
"Myths fall hard," says Dr. David Sobel, medical director for patient education and health promotion for Kaiser Permanente Northern California. "Patients come in to see me and they're smoking, they're overweight, they've got a poor diet. But what they want is some chest X-rays, a complete exam: 'Reassure me.'"
And although we may already "know" them, hearing our doctor recommend it can make a big impact. One study found, for example, that 5 percent of smokers quit because of a doctor's advice.
Doctors have traditionally taken the Hippocratic Oath to pledge their loyalty to practicing medicine ethically and to the best of their knowledge. One of the first tenets reads "I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone."
About 78 percent of patients expect it, and 65 percent of primary care doctors believe, according to an Archives of Internal Medicine survey, that an annual physical exam is useful.
A New York Times article recently reported that:
Doctors misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 percent of the time, according to studies of autopsies.
Millions of patients are treated for the wrong disease.
The rate has not really changed since the 1930s, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Could it be that, as Joseph Britto, a former intensive-care doctor, suggested in the New York Times article, that doctors may not be putting their "all" into helping and curing patients because they have no real incentive to do so?
"Unlike pilots," Dr. Britto said, "doctors don't go down with their planes."
"We sometimes ignore the most obvious things," he says. "They may not have the magic of medicine but they have the biggest impact on health."
Are Doctors Recommending the "Obvious"?
A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine really illustrates this point. Upon looking at survey data regarding obesity that had been collected by state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the researchers found:
[b]Health care providers advised
Nonetheless, people and doctors are reluctant to change. "Most of us haven't had the guts to get rid of it," says Dr. Fred Heidrich, a physician at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle and clinical professor at the University of Washington.
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