This one makes my blood boil. Being a doctor, a good doctor, is not easy.  It requires a lot of thinking, taking every patient who comes before you not just as a human, but as a clinical care problem.  Knowing the facts, making judgments. It is because we have a tendency to abscond this role that “doctor extenders,” cheaper people, rush in to fill the void.

One of the things we have to do is to weigh the advantages and risks of every procedure.

Sure, there are some mechanisms in place to help us. Things like videotaped informed consents. Things like meters and technology and such.

In the case reported above, a woman who had Bell’s Palsy, a fairly common (and often, spontaneously receding) hemifacial paralysis was subjected to a CT scan.  She got too much radiation and became quite ill; someone did not notice the excessive radiation noted on a panel somewhere. Read more on Should FDA Regulate CT Scans?…