Dr. Joel Aronowitz — How to Know If You Should Trust your Doctor
Dr, Joel Aronowitz: “Okay, how can you know if you should trust your doctor? They have crazy hair. How do you know if you can trust your doctor? Let me give you three tips. One is credentials. Where did they go to school? Did you ever hear of it before? Are they board certified in the correct specialty? Or is it kind of a made-up board? They actually do a residency in it.
Number two, when you see the doctor, did the doctor pay attention to what your problem was, go through an orderly history taking physical exam, come to a conclusion that makes sense, and then prescribe a treatment? Or did the doctor just walk in and come to a conclusion based on what was written on your chart or based on what the nurse or the PA or the assistant told them? Did the doctor do doctoring basically? Did the doctor examine you? Did the doctor actually touch you when they examined you and looked at you as a patient? So one, credentials. Did they have credentials that made sense to you? Two, did the doctor do the doctoring? That is, did they actually take a history, do a physical exam, come to a conclusion, and prescribe treatment?
And number three is a little test question. And I think a good test question for your doctor is to suggest a second opinion or suggest some other test or suggest that you read something on the internet or in a book, let’s say, and you’re questioning the doctor in a gentle way about their opinion. If the doctor reacts as though it’s a personal affront, then that doctor is concerned more with themselves than they are with the patient. Any good doctor will always welcome another opinion or other information or be able to explain why, well, yes, that’s a good point, but that doesn’t make any sense what you read because it doesn’t apply to you for this reason, whatever. Or, oh, you want a second opinion? Well, I think you have a very simple problem. It’s just acne or it’s just a mole or whatever, but go ahead, it can’t hurt.
If the doctor is feeling personally threatened because you’re seeking another opinion or you’re questioning the doctor’s opinion, maybe that doctor is not secure and not really focused on the patient, what is best for the patient, and instead is really focused on getting on to the next patient or has too much personal investment from a personal standpoint. So the focus of any good doctor is always going to be the patient’s welfare and what will benefit that patient, not themselves personally. That’s why you’re paying the doctor is to put their own personal issues aside and only deal with you, what’s best for you from a medical standpoint. So I hope those three things. One, check out the credentials a little bit, do a little bit of homework, do a little bit of thinking about the professionalism and the credentials, that sort of thing. Two, judge the doctoring that goes on and the doctoring in most of the time, in most interactions, is going to consist in some degree of taking some history from you, doing some examination of what’s necessary, and many times that involves actually looking at or touching the patient, looking at any pertinent laboratory or imaging, assessing what all this information coming to a conclusion and then explaining it to you, not just doing a cookie-cutter kind of thing and being more concerned with the medical record and now it’s all computerized and spending all the time with the computer and not actually doctoring you as the patient. And then finally, have some little question available to yourself that you can kind of test where that doctor is coming from just in case you’re worried. And the question should always come down to what is this doctor focused on? Is this doctor focused on me as the patient or is the doctor worried about their own feelings or the state of the world or the state of their office or that sort of thing?
The focus of a good doctor should always be on the patient and if you as the patient have some way of assessing that during the visit, then that’s a very good indication you’re dealing with a good doctor because the best doctors don’t have to be the smartest, they don’t have to be the top of their class or the top of their field. The good doctoring many times has to do with being able to put your own feelings aside and call a colleague for help with something that you don’t know everything about or go back and do a little homework, do a little reading or investigating about something. So you don’t need the brightest guy in the room, you need somebody who’s a good doctor and I hope those three things help you select a good doctor.”
Originally published at https://drjoelaronowitzmd.blogspot.com on December 11, 2023.
