The eternal tightrope of “naive to tin foil hat”.
My time in hospital recently hammered home an uncomfortable truth, something which seems to permeate all areas of life but is especially obvious in healthcare. That is the importance of a healthy scepticism to authority.
Over the last few years, heavily assisted by the internet, the levels of total nonsense information we all encounter has gone through the roof. A seeming disregard by far too many to science and generally everything which pulled us out of the dark ages. However the answer to this, in my opinion, is not a slavish obedience to anyone wearing a stethoscope around their neck/with letters after their name etc. Afterall It was not that long ago that some doctors walked onto our TV screens, stared at us in the eyes and told us the health benefits of smoking.
The boring truth, as in all areas of life, is somewhere in the middle and we must lean on science and the experts while feeling no discomfort in challenging authority and trusting our instincts. I witnessed time and time again mistakes and poor information during my time in hospital. I certainly don’t believe this was from a place of malice however if this hadn't been challenged the negative outcome for me would have been the same.
When you’re feeling unwell it feels all too easy to handover to the experts entirely and sit back and relax. Unfortunately unless you have advocates around you 24/7 we simply don’t have that luxury.
From an AD perspective I was like almost anyone in the UK, in that we believe our route for any kind of complex health condition is as follows; GP, referral to specialist, see the specialist, if they can’t help you’re more or less at the end of the road. This is simply not the case. After years of seeing a local dermatologist and being told I was at the end of the road I then did my research and went to a London specialist who said I hadn’t even “scratched the surface”. They then proceeded to treatments and medications I’d never been offered after decades of suffering with my condition.
I did learn something fairly recently which blew my mind after speaking to a doctor who is heavily involved in skin condition research. He said that in order to prescribe the latest ground breaking skin treatment, dermatologists have to keep up and keep themselves educated which many simply do not. They therefore may be telling their patients that they’re essentially out of ideas simply because they themselves have not kept themselves up to date with the latest treatments.
On the other side of the equation a lot of us feel a sense of desperation which can make us vulnerable to the snake oil salesman as “it probably won’t work but I can’t take the chance in case it does”. Which I fully understand and empathise with and I myself have spent plenty of money on what was ultimately nonsense.
To summarise; we all need a “healthy” level of scepticism and what exactly this equates to is almost impossible to define. Lean heavily on science and the professionals but don’t ignore that voice/your own instincts when you know something isn’t right.
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