What to do When Your Doctors Disagree
Channel: BioBalance Healthcast
Date: 2017-05-21

Read more at www.biobalancehealth.com

Professional ethics among doctors encourage them to be respectful of the work of other physicians and to realize that the other doctor may have a different treatment focus or a different reason for the treatment plan they are following with their shared patient. 

It is a challenge for doctors to find the time to speak with each other regarding the differing aspects of the treatment they are providing. Realistically they may have different agendas, different data bases of information, different contracts with pharmaceutical providers, insurers, hospitals etc. Doctors schedules are quite busy and rarely match for phone calls to be practical outside of emergencies. Typically doctors who wish to honor the protocols they were trained to respect, to help create a team approach with regard to treating the symptoms of the patient who is seeing each of them for different reasons, write letters to each other explaining what their goals are and what they plan to do with regard to treatment. Also, there is often a hierarchy of authority/priority which can be determined when doctors disagree about sequence and timing of treatments as well as medicines and approaches of therapy.

This is important because ordinary patients and average citizens do not have the specialized education of the physician and do not know what to do when their doctors seem to disagree with a treatment or a medicine that they have received from a different physician. This causes consternation, anxiety and confusion for the patient and often creates delays and/or complications for the improvement of the health of the patient.

Doctors may also follow a differing philosophical approach in their understanding of the goal of medicine and treatment planning. Some doctors seem to focus on using standards of care and lab derived norms for planning of treatment of a patient. Other doctors seem to focus on using the alleviation or remission of expressed symptoms that are causing the patient concern or discomfort as their goal. When these two philosophies clash it is usually the patient who is the loser because they do not know whom to listen to or follow.