Doctors Told to Be Suspicious of Patients

 

Apparently, patients are not to be trusted. Horror of horrors, they may be using alternative medicines!

Doctors Should Be ‘Suspicious’ of Patients

GPs should have a “high level” of suspicion that their patients are using other therapies they have not been told about, according to the authors of a new study.

Doctors Julie Ryan and Brian Lennon looked at what alternative and complementary therapies patients attending a surgery in Newport, Co Mayo, were taking.

They issued 100 questionnaires to patients and the majority responded, 60pc of whom were female and 40pc male.

Of the female patients they found that 21pc of them and 15pc of males had used a form of alternative medicines.

“The most common form used was herbal supplements (81pc) and this was followed by osteopathy (37pc) and acupuncture (19pc).”

However, more than half did not tell their GP, “mainly because they did not think it was relevant to their treatment”, the study published in the GP’s journal ‘Forum’ revealed.

The complementary therapies were listed as herbal medicines or vitamin supplements, osteopathy, craniology, acupuncture and homeopathy. …

Read the rest of the story here.

Perhaps patients choose not to inform their doctors that they’re using alternatives because they don’t want to deal with their doctors’ negativity about it?

Tagged alternative medicine, conventional medicine, modern medicine