On identifying good health care professionals

[nancylebov]

For a long time, I've been saying that it's crucial to find doctors who listen and think, but here's another criterion from synecdochic:

In conversation with someone tonight, I realized that I have finally been able to identify the single criterion that, above all else, governs whether or not I will keep a health care professional or fire them: if their response to me explaining my weirdnesses is not annoyance, irritation, or disbelief but instead they get that glint in the back of their eyes that says OKAY THAT IS SO FUCKING COOL CAN I POKE AT IT, I am way more likely to keep them.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

As someone poked at from a very young age (about three weeks) and still inexplicable to doctorkind, I can't think of much worse than people who want to poke at any of my "it"s.

I understand the sentiment behind this statement, but it makes me shudder. It's too easy to dehumanize people with this way of thinking.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that answer-- I could appreciate what I quoted, but I wasn't sure it covered the ground adequately.

Do you have something you check for in health professionals?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I like that one, and it dovetails bizarrely well with my number one criterion: humility. The ability to see the world as FUCKING COOL, including one's patients, and diseases, and all that, requires the understanding that one doesn't understand stuff. That there is stuff to learn. That one has the room to be wrong.

Humility goes really well with enthusiasm for learning.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

At the very least it means they're looking at *you*, and not at the piece of paper / computer screen in front of them...

...but I'd sure like some compassion to go with that curiosity.

Also, reminded me of this:
https://xkcd.com/242/

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Compassion is great. Compassion is wonderful. Compassion is important.

I have a couple of very compassionate doctors, and I really appreciate that about them, I do. But I can get compassion someplace else. I can even do without.

Right now, I would gladly trade my compassionate doctors -- plus a decade or two worth of compassion from all sources, and what the heck, my total current net worth -- for half an hour or so of intelligent, open-minded, well-informed testing and diagnosis.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Yes! I am desperately seeking an intelligent doctor who needs a good project. (That or anybody with any medical credentials who will run a tilt-table test.)