Doctors make decisions based on a mix of theoretical knowledge and experience. More the experience than the knowledge.
‘Experience’ is another word for their subjective view of the patient histories that they have observed through their career. Why not make the decision based on an emprical measure of patient histories, taken over a large random-ish sample, rather than one particular physicians subjective interpretation of only the patients he has seen?
Better yet, why not present this data to your physician and have a talk about it?
Well, you will have to be careful how you do it; my understanding is that most doctors are exasperated at people who self-diagnose based on reading things on the Internet. It’s a bias, sure, but it doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable one. So you wouldn’t want to bring it up on your very first visit. You will need to wait until you’ve demonstrated your non-crank-ness.
Once you and your doctor know each other better, though, I think it would be an excellent idea to bring more data to the table. My objection is to an article entitled “Med Patient Social Networks Are Better Scientific Institutions”, not one entitled “Med Patient Social Networks Are A Useful Tool In Improving Care”.
Doctors make decisions based on a mix of theoretical knowledge and experience. More the experience than the knowledge.
‘Experience’ is another word for their subjective view of the patient histories that they have observed through their career. Why not make the decision based on an emprical measure of patient histories, taken over a large random-ish sample, rather than one particular physicians subjective interpretation of only the patients he has seen?
Better yet, why not present this data to your physician and have a talk about it?
Well, you will have to be careful how you do it; my understanding is that most doctors are exasperated at people who self-diagnose based on reading things on the Internet. It’s a bias, sure, but it doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable one. So you wouldn’t want to bring it up on your very first visit. You will need to wait until you’ve demonstrated your non-crank-ness.
Once you and your doctor know each other better, though, I think it would be an excellent idea to bring more data to the table. My objection is to an article entitled “Med Patient Social Networks Are Better Scientific Institutions”, not one entitled “Med Patient Social Networks Are A Useful Tool In Improving Care”.