A Doctor, A Sleuth

Researching the Doctor

It is interesting how, after having a conversation with a doctor, you find yourself researching their background and qualifications. Obviously, if I am acquainted with the name of the person before I meet them, I will have done my investigations and acquired all the essential knowledge about them beforehand.

I had opted for the full medical coverage provided by my company, which included both a health and a mental health assessment. After answering the questions ahead of the appointment, a profile had been built up of what services might be required and how to address whatever questions I might have.

The Assessment Begins

I was booked in for a two-hour session and first welcomed at reception, where I confirmed or updated the information they held about me, then signed a document authorising the engagement.

Soon, I was ushered into a treatment room with a health advisor, who went through my assessments and checked my heart rhythm using a device on which I had to place two fingers of each hand, before taking my blood pressure from both arms at the same time.

Blood, however, she could not get from either arm, so we settled on the fingertip prick, which did not yield enough for extensive tests. I had not taken in enough fluids, and perhaps, as sometimes happens, my veins were simply not up for it.

The measurement around my belly button suggested I should lose a bit of girth, but besides that, there seemed to be little else of concern. The mental health questionnaire I had completed beforehand drew little comment either; my answers, it seemed, concluded that I was doing alright before I saw the doctor.

Meeting a Model Patient

The very confident and chatty medical doctor took me into her consulting room and first inferred that I seemed to have all the features of a model patient: moderation in the right places, with a few tweaks needed elsewhere. She started with mouth health, moved to diet, then the need for exercise, and how my medication could be affecting my fitness; nominal changes one should consider for a healthier life.

I suppose what struck me was her attention to detail and the minutiae. There was something incisive and forthright in the way she engaged, a readiness to enter the fray, to discuss and to have her own presumptions challenged, which I suspect owed as much to her life beyond strictly medical fields as to anything within them.

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She had hinted that she was involved in medical malpractice and often appeared as an expert witness. This led to a discussion about medical personnel practising medicine defensively, with much caution and a fear of litigation.

Treating Patients as Individuals

To that, I could only consider myself fortunate, as in all areas of my medical service requirements, sometimes owing to questions or challenges to the orthodoxy, I have had much better outcomes. Her view was that doctors needed to engage more and to treat their patients as intelligent individuals to whom medical studies might not directly apply.

Being from an ethnic minority herself, she was aware of all the other issues we encounter when using the medical establishment, from cultural insensitivity to inadequate attention to particular concerns.

The Many-Hatted Doctor

Even on the questions my other medical teams could not answer, she had an expansive view of the options I might have available, differentiating the medication used to manage cholesterol from the way it impacts heart disease. This is obviously an area in which I need a good deal more knowledge before I agree to a suggestion, of which I have had no conviction.

So, back to the doctor: a general practitioner, an expert witness, an injury lawyer and a medical examiner. It is like having someone a third the age of Miss Marple, or half the age of Jessica Fletcher, holding a stethoscope to your back as you take deep breaths and she notices your lizard skin, or xerosis, for which she recommends Cetraben cream. It might as well have been Dana Scully unravelling the mystery of my human body.

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