> Poor form. A good dentist should have more professional curiosity than this.

I find _very little_ "professional curiosity" exists overall. Heck, I don't even always see it within our industry where I think it's maybe more common? Maybe I'm biased.

s/dentists/doctors

I'm reading up on new tech stuff all the time and it shocks me that most of the doctors I've ever interacted with don't seem to be doing the same. It's like they are just coasting on what they learned in school. And since the vast majority of us only see 1 doctor of a given type at best once a year (maybe more for the dentist, but the same dentist) we never get any sort of "second opinion".

Think about all the people you've worked with in tech, now think about them being the sole-decider for how to architect/build something without any pushback or anyone else to push back or give advice. Yeah, that's how I imagine the whole medical field.

Sure, we'd all love to have "Dr House" and his team examining us (or insert your favorite tv doctor/team) but I have a feeling that the 5-10min I see my doctor plus another half hour at max to read my charts/respond to my messages is all the time he thinks about me for the whole year. <1hr of attention and I'm supposed to expect him to pick up on issues that aren't obvious in my blood work or other measurements he takes? It's bleak.

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dvirsky 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A couple of years ago I had a bit of a complicated and rare condition that required dental surgery (a tooth I broke as a kid caused some inflammation that basically dug a big hole in my skull over years) . The surgeon was so excited, especially when I opted for a more challenging and less destructive solution to the situation, I knew I was in good hands.

He was like "Ooh! we're going to have so much fun together! A case like this is soooo rare!" and I joked that it's not something you want to hear from a surgeon but it really assured me that he's good and passionate about his job. And he did indeed do a great job.

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devin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The doctors I've found that seem to be interested in doing their homework:

A) Work in teaching hospitals and have ample time to offer you during a visit

B) Have their own practice and have ample time to offer you during your visit

C) Are in their residency and have more time than a typical doc to spend time looking into what's bothering you, but you can tell they're being groomed to see 100 patients per day at 7 minutes a pop.

I switched a couple years ago to seeing a private practice doc. I can get same-day appointments, 90 minute appointments, 24 hr phone/text access for emergencies, cheaper labs than my insurance offers, and more for about $100/mo per person.

	▲	dgunay 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I briefly shadowed a doctor when I was interested in potentially going to medical school. I sat down while he met with a patient. He left the room pretty quickly. From the conversation I figured he'd be right back and just went to get something or check something. He comes back in 5 minutes later and I find out that he'd gotten up and seen 3-4 other patients before realizing I was still in the first room.

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gavinray 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unironically, give your aggregate health records (office visits, bloodwork results, etc) to an LLM and you're likely to get better advice.

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dghlsakjg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It sounds like you haven’t spoken to actual doctors and this is all observations from outside.

All the doctors I know of are constantly learning, even outside of their legally mandated continuing education. I don’t know any that aren’t curious about new drugs and treatments.

It sounds like maybe this is just bad communication. The writer of the article was talking about something they had seemingly read in popular media about regrowing teeth. It is not yet possible to regrow teeth in any sort of meaningful way. The doctor will almost certainly have known that. Even if they don’t know anything about it, you can’t regrow teeth so what is there to learn?

If someone came to you and said: “I heard that AI can build a $1billion business with no human intervention”, you might similarly roll your eyes and keep going about your day rather than try to explain why that brushes with reality, but isn’t.

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gritspants 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No offense but if there's nothing wrong with you and you just need an annual, that's great. There are shit doctors out there but, maybe you don't need anything? I see my Dr quite a bit and when I went from needing an annual checkup to needing help, that relationship changed. Many of them do care.

	▲	joshstrange 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Without going into _all_ my medical history, I can tell you that there is only so much people can put up with before they give up. When I was younger I was much more optimistic about the state of things, I'm in my 30's now and there are a whole slew of things I know are going to be next to useless to bring up with my doctor. Their only recourse is to suggest expensive tests that may or may not actually help and I've very rarely felt like they actually care. Dismissing anything I bring up with "Oh, it's not X", with what, at least to me, feels like not enough information to make a call one way or the other. I have trouble breathing through my nose, it feels blocked sometimes. It alternates which nostril feels blocked, sometimes both feel blocked. My airflow is greatly reduced. I went to a doctor about it, "deviated septum" they said with complete confidence and some issue with enlarged turbinates (sp? I don't have the records accessible right now) they wanted to cut out. Ok, I agreed, dealt with the hellscape that is hospital billing and being made to feel guilty for daring to ask "how much will this cost?", then getting a bill later that only bore a passing resemblance to the quote. In their defence they told me the quote was only an estimate. Cool. Then a year or two later all the symptoms are back. I was told the enlarged whatever could grow back so I guess they were right? Fun. I moved and had to get a new doctor, I tell him about it all and tell him the symptoms are back. He didn't bother even looking at me, just told me to try an over-the-counter spray to see if that helped (it didn't). Then (unrelated) he told me he wanted me to get something else checked out. Ok, I try to listen to my doctors, I call to schedule, I get on the schedule, then I get a letter outlining the procedure and the cost. It wasn't made clear to me at all it was a "we need to put you under a general"/"you'll need a ride home"/"Oh, and it's ~$6-7K". All for "we should check on that since you've been on X medication for Y years", an afterthought statement (or at least how it felt) that was actually much more involved and not cheap. This is my experience with doctors. As for dentists, I moved and they wanted to do something about a filling that was having a problem. Don't worry, it only will cost $100. Bill comes, it's $300+ because apparently my last dentist (I had them transfer all my records) touched that tooth within the last 2 years so insurance won't cover it. Cool. Cause I definitely fucking know that "Tooth 22" had work done on it, that totally should be 100% my responsibility. /s. They even had some "pricing person" come over to talk to me about it, why didn't they mention it? They had all the records! Just so annoying. The US medical system is miserable to interact with. You have incomplete information and are often treated with such incredibly disrespect if you dare to ask questions.