One of my pet peeves

Halbert,

My pet peeve is similar to yours. I have worked closely with physicians for almost 40 years and I can say that most do not keep up with new trends. I know (believe me!) how difficult it can be to keep up with just the drug literature (I'm a pharmacist), however, if you are a "so called specialist", you should know more than lay patients. Many have remarked that there are patients on this site that know more about the overall kinds of treatments than their urologist and certainly more than their primary care physician.
That is the truth. I was going over new scans that TA was discussing with my radiation oncologist that treated me with IMRT and he had not heard of them. On the other hand, the physician's knowledge that did my brachytherapy was off the charts. I was stunned. I'd mention an article I read and he was friends with the author and expanded upon his findings. He also told me the pluses and minuses of the new scans. That is why the quality of the physician is so important and most do not realize the vast difference between an average MD and the best.

Halbert, what you posted may reflect a knowledge issue more than a financial incentive though I'm sure that both exists.

My pet peeves are

(1) Incompetent doctors who don't get their medical licenses suspended or revoked.
(2) Competent doctors who take shortcuts in order to make more money
(3) Patients who take no responsibility for their own health and waste medical resources (this is going to eventually bankrupt us)
(4) Physicians who don't acknowledge the limitations of their medical knowledge or keep up with new information
(5) Take-a-number trends in health care.
(6) Insurance companies driving healthcare decisions.
(7) The shortage of primary care providers
(8) Over treatment of health issues that will resolve themselves by doing nothing or respond to far less aggressive treatment
(9) The unethical influence drug companies have on physicians
(10) The lack of patient education about many diseases and conditions. Healthcare provides are always in a hurry and don't have time to properly educate patients.

Tim:

Excellent list.

Mel

compiler said...
Tim:

Excellent list.

Mel

Ditto!

I was chatting with my physician nephew yesterday and asked how his practice was going. Being curious about how much time he gets to spend with a patient I asked about incentives to see as many as possible. There are indeed monetary incentives to reach and cross a threshold of patients per day (or per week/month - I don't know the time frame). So compensation is logarithmic To his credit, he spends as much time as required with each patient but he still needs to make a decent living.

There was a pet peeve of mine that I used to have (until I discovered a very handy way to avoid it, more on that below), and one that is relevant to this thread, as it often involved accessing doctors' and medical websites.

That problem is having way too many usernames and passwords!

On more than one occasion in the past I can remember trying to log on to a website, often medical, again and again, only to be getting repeated messages of "password not recognized." I would then grumble and swear to myself, until it finally dawned on me that I had been wrongly using the username and password for another, similar, website. Properly annoyed with myself, I would then use the correct ones, and log on just fine.

But then I eventually came across a really neat way to create passwords, and in a way that minimizes occurrence of the above problem. Best way to explain it is to give an example.

Suppose you want to log on to your account on the Quest Diagnostics website, to find out your PSA test result from a test a few days ago. If you have set up a "password sentence," you can proceed as follows.

When it's time to type in your password, just say the password sentence in your head, for example:

Quest Diagnostics gives me my PSA test result

And as you do so, type into the password box the first letter of each word, as you say the words in your head:

qdgmmptr

which, it turns out, is in fact your actual password. Now you simply hit Enter and you're in.

Advantages: it's a nonsense password (the best kind); the name of the agency is contained within the password sentence, automatically identifying who the password is for; this password sentence is secure, since even if it falls into the wrong hands, it looks like it's just a sentence, not obviously being code for an actual password.

However, a bit of a challenge in constructing such a "password sentence" may be that many places now require both letters and numbers in passwords. But with a little creativity one can work around that.

So, too many usernames and passwords can at times be a nuisance and therefore a pet peeve, but often a little creativity can solve the problem.

BillyBob@388 said...

Pratoman said...
Pretty much what Tim said, especially items 2, 5, 6 and 9.

plus.....,
Pharmaceutical companies having the ability to advertise directly to consumers
Food manufacturers killing us with their processed foods and sugar
Cigarette manufacturers being allowed to exist, knowing what we know
oh, and people who drive 10 mph slower than the speed limit on a highway, in the left lane.

start.att.net/news/read/category/news/article/time-people_are_praising_this_state_police_trooper_who-rtime

Apparently I’m not the only one. Lol

Actually, some research I saw somewhere suggests that the truly best password (and one you can use multiple places so you don't need to remember a jillion passwords, is a combination of 3 or 4 short words from a random word generator such as: edgekicklamp (if caps or numbers are needed it could become: Edgek1cklamp. A website such as randomwordgenerator dot com can help create them.

Sometimes you just listen to what everybody says, read all of the books on the subject, go to the different sites that deal with prostate cancer....then make the best darned decision you can make...considering.
If you keep second guessing yourself every time you make a decision then you will go out of your ever loving mind. Did I decide right...no/yes...maybe I should have done this....this person says that this is the best...but this person says they are full of crap and it's better if you do as I did....etc, etc, etc.
If I kept second guessing myself every time I've read a differing opinion on a forum....I would just go and suck start my .45 and make a final decision that way.
Sometimes you have to just take all of the advice, opinions, facts....add gut intuition (which has saved my butt through the years MANY times...pray for divine guidance... and then make a darn decision and STICK TO IT!!!
Nothings absolutely right/nothings absolutely wrong. No black and white on this subject. Subjective in so many ways....driving me absolutely NUTS!!!
Sorry for the rant...I go to see my surgeon today and will make a decision, based on what I have to work with. I