On 04-Jan-98, D Young wrote:
>tending to indicate that in fact if the worries are
>unjustified, investigations are unlikely to reduce them...<
>Absolutely! Growing Behavioural Therapy literature suggesting that GPs
>among others fuel phobia and hypochondriasis. Why? Because " I'm certain
>theres little wrong BUT we'll just check it out with a....." Everything
>before the "but" is bullshit. We apparently are too scared to say "you've
>no serious illness" first time, and emphatically.
Absolutely - the prime interest in general practice, is risk-taking: 'tis our
job. OK, sometimes we get it wrong and we have to say sorry, but not very
often. It might be old hat, but the "physical/social/psychological" model
is still relevant even in 1997 (sorry '8). Just think about how much worry we
cause by saying "let's do a scan/blood test/xray just in case" - when we give
the patient the negative result they say "thank God, I thought you thought it
was cancer..." etc
Hence giving penicillin for sore throats because we think the patient wants
them, when really the patient just wants to know they're ok and takes the
prescription only to bin it. But then they come back next time because to
please us because they think we want to give them an fp10...
Hmmm...
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* | | ___ __ * Bradley Cheek *
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* |_|_| |___ __| * web: http://www.wcsquare.demon.co.uk *
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