Pain Management-How do you change doctors?

[mmglobal]

I was fired by my pain management doc after about 8 months with him.

"You are too mobile to be having the kind or pain you are reporting", he said.

About a month later, I leaned my head forward to rinse my hair in the shower and my left leg went numb. Thanks Doc. I liked getting some vindication, but that is worth little after the humiliation of being fired by the doc and the indignities I ran into when shopping for another. I can't write more now, but there is another worthwhile story there.

Mark

[Maria]

I adore him.. 8 years still seeing same person in San Diego. He likes that I'm as functional as I am and still writes my pain med script. I asked him point blank last visit if it was OK that I don't see him but every 5 or 6 months actually as the scripts written for every 3 months last me that long and he said "no of course not."

More to say tho back is killing me sitting since I've not been able to bear wt. on right foot this past week and am not cleared to do so until next Friday.

argghhhhhh.... back pain stinks

[Hooch]

Originally Posted by mmglobal

"You are too mobile to be having the kind or pain you are reporting", he said.

This is the crux of pain treatment, and why it is treated so poorly.

It is self-reported, and a treating doc has zero insight into the level of pain. Zero, nada, nothing.

The med profession gives lip service to this, but at the end of the day they are in it for the power and ego gratification the position provides. There is nothing gratifying to the ego about having a patient tell you what level his pain is at.

It is far more gratifying to use your 'experience' and any other bollocks you care to come up with to interpret the patients pain.

If your interpretation is patently false, well, tough titties to the patient.

This is actually demonstrable incompetence, but a medical relationship is a power relationship, and the role of a patient is to be compliant and have no power over their own treatment.


So the problem is obviously the relationship, and the lack of power the patient has over their own treatment.

The solution involves empowering the patient, by actually giving them control over what goes into their bodies.

This would never happen, not because of the potential for proliferation of addiction, but because it is anathema to the medical profession that the patient knows their body and condition better than the doctor, and has a far deeper insight into what works and what doesn't.


You could argue with me on the last point, but I have dealt with enough dickheads in white coats to know that many of these twangers are in love with power and status more than they are with serving the needs of someone in strife as best they can.

Pain Management is one of the aspects of the profession where this relationship becomes amplified because

a) it is palliative
b) it lacks the status of the other disciplines, and probably attracts more also rans
c) the patients are mostly desperate and in terrible pain
d) there is no objective indication of successful treatment (similar to the mental health disciplines).


The answer to this problem lies something along the line of a fundamental shake up of the doctor/patient relationship, and the establishment of something similar to a patient bill of rights.

Something has to be done alter the balance of power in this relationship, as it is far too skewed.

The role of the doctor should be to advise the patient on the available medications and their long term effects and addictiveness. The choice should then be the patients to try certain medications.

If people want to abuse the system to obtain narcotics for recreational drug use, I am of the opinion that they should be allowed to. I would rather have a few more addicts rorting drugs out of the system than have people in genuine need be put aside. There is no way to tell the difference between the two. No way at all. Addiction is a choice you make when you ingest a drug: untreated pain is not a choice.

*****

It is unfortunate that such changes will not be made or even attempted, due simply to the arrogance and conceit of the medical profession.

[Hooch]

I know that seems like a crazy rant but jeeze at some point a doctor has to be judged on their performance.

If you call a plumber to your house for a broken dunny and he turns a spanner a few times, gives it a kick, flushes it, watches it overflow all over the floor, then turns to you and says 'job done mate', you'd boot him up the arse and turf him out the front door and never hire the incompetent fool again.

But if you go to a doc and say ' I am in severe pain ', and he goes, 'nah you're alright', well everythings ok because it's the doc who decides what pain you are in not yourself!! patently ridiculous!!

And in everyones viewpoint it's the doc who is right, in society at large, the doc is a protected species.

As for the poor bugger who is disabled by pain, can't work, going down the toilet financially and may or may not have a family to help him out... well tough titties mate.

Most people in severe chronic pain are impoverished or rely on a family member to earn an income. Just a ridiculous situation, and totally avoidable.