After horrific stories like the Harold Shipman case where he murdered many of his patients, how do you still allow yourself to trust your doctor? Maybe an extreme example but the fact is that many people don’t trust their doctor. They avoid going to hospital or to their local surgery, not necessarily because they are worried about being murdered but because they are scared of their own bodies, scared of what that lump on their head might actually be and scared of dealing with their own problems.
This is a dangerous fear to have as you may be putting your life at risk by avoiding the doctor. Here is some information to help you trust your doctor:
Training
Every doctor, no matter what stage they are at in their career has been through a lot of schooling and training and examples and practical tests and done work experience and shadowed doctors and proven their skills before they are allowed anywhere near you. Even then they are normally shadowed themselves by senior doctors for a long time until they have proven to be trustworthy and proficient enough to do things on their own. If senior doctors can trust your doctor then so should you, especially when they have had to work so hard to get where they are.
Technology
Often these days you don’t have to just trust your doctors opinions on something, there is a scientific test or technology solution that they can use to prove to you what the problem is and to back up their diagnosis enough so that you are happy to trust their cure.
Temps
Some patients may be alarmed to hear that a lot of doctors working today are in fact temps. They are normally called a ‘locum’. The thought that someone operating on your heart or giving you intravenous drugs could well be here just for a day may well be a bit scary, especially if your experience of temps is spotty stoner office juniors who do their job with their eyes closed. In the medical world this image could not be further from the truth. Locum jobs are highly desirable in the medical professions as they are often better paid than regular doctors and offer the doctor the opportunity to travel more. The fact is those in locum physiotherapy jobs probably has more experience in more situations than your regular full time physiotherapist.
At the end of the day though you need to see a doctor from time to time so better just get over your fear as soon as you can before it is too late.
