How to find a good (or appropriate) doctor
General case
What is the strategy you use to find a good / appropriate doctor?
The current ones I know are:
Randomness
Mouth to mouth
Reading online reviews
Randomness gives... random results.
Mouth to mouth is not necessarily better because often the friend/family that consulted has not much legitimity to evaluate how effective the doctor was. Often they will judge more the relationship to their doctor that the performance of the doctor. It may be appropriate for certain people but in my case I just expect the doctor to be good, kindness is just a bonus.
Reading online reviews: there's often not much available and it compares to mouth to mounth. Sometimes the doctor has a website and will display his show his research papers but it's usually not the case, and when it's the case that doctor is often expensive and unbookable before 6 months.
My personal case
I don't have any condition that will make me die in the very short term. I have mostly conditions I'd like fixed and that can greatly improve my life. I won't go into details publicly but think about that kind of conditions: stress, anxiety, addiction, sleep, diabete, hormonal problem, obesity...
I am somehow frightened to go to an experienced but passionless
doctor that relies on what he learnt at school 30 years ago at school without updating itself at all.
I don't expect my doctor to give me only a diagnostic and pills, I expect him to explain me in a quantified way how my own body work, so that I can adapt my lifestyle
I'm a big fan of the ideas behind Quantified-Self. I think we all have a different body and DNA, and we should all take the time to understand how our own body work.
I would like my doctor to be ok with self experiments. I would like him to design meaningful lifestyle change tests and take quantified measures of the results, like blood tests.
So I'd like to know, if you were in my position, how would you search the the appropriate doctor?
(1)1 Comments
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Your strategy is correct.
In my experience there is no other way, really, just keep looking. The signs of a good doctor are:
doctor is genuinely interested in your case and he/she is eager to explain you the particularities of your issue;
doctor loves his/her work and tracks studies in the field;
after the visit you feel much better, even though, no procedures were performed on you yet and you didn't take any medication.
I come from the country where doctor's are paid very badly by the state and are often incompetent. Yet, recently I saw that one doctor agreed to talk to a patient online off hours (to examine and clarify test results) and then made a visit off hours too. During the visit this doctor made pretty modest (in terms of money) prescriptions and talked a lot about the condition in order to educate the patient. This doc openly stated that she loved her job.
The above passage was just to tell you that there are doctors who love their job, even in not so good countries, regardless of remuneration they will do their best to help the patient and follow Hippocratic Oath.
While you seek for THE doctor, you are free to submit more specific questions here on this website. You are not alone.
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