grrr doctors! how they hate to say "i don't know"

[mopinko]

middle child has had abdominal troubles for a long time. she had a colonoscopy last week. when the doc came in, he said "well, good news, we didn't find anything". my daughter burst into tears. why can't they just say "well, we didn't find any answers"? it's not that they don't know that patients are often unhappy with normal results because they want to know what it wrong.
is it that they lack that empathy? or they just hate to admit their limits?

worn these same shoes myself. wanted scream in their faces sometimes.

[MedicalAdmin]

1. Both.

Many lack empathy, perhaps because they are not given enough time to have it, or it may be trained out. And many cannot admit to being wrong ever.

There is a brilliant doctor in the area who ends up giving us tons of patients because he cannot admit that he is wrong. When he gets to the end of his little bag of tricks and gets no response, he tells the patients that he can't do anything else for them and shows them the door. Lots of them end up at our clinic.

[elleng]

2. Sorry. They/he doesn't understand needs of the patient

other than specific/malady related matters. I think its a human thing, tho certainly frustrating.

[Goblinmonger]

3. I had (and occasionally still have) abdominal problems that flare up.

When it first happened, it was horrible. Could only drink gatorade for about a month and a half. They went from it being my appendix (was almost carted off for emergency surgery) to Chron's to ulcers to a million other things. They did a biopsy of various regions. They gave me a dose of steroids and it was gone in a couple days. I asked my doctor what it was and he said, "No idea. But if it only pops up once in a while, we would treat it with steroids regardless so we are good to go." It flares up every couple years or so. It's frustrating to hear "No idea" after a billion tests.

Best of luck.