Still upset

DB,

As you know, I can’t join you in your crusade, because, as you also know, this case is an extreme anecdote, not the rule, when it comes to how juries handle medical malpractice cases. To make this a cause celebre would be to play the worst kind of sound byte politics, portraying a gross distortion of the realities of the system, which, on the whole, works very well. For the times that the jury lets its emotion sway toward the plaintiff, or uses the plaintiff-as-message-sender, how many more times has this system let a doctor get off scot-free based on sympathy for the physician and respect for the white coat?

This is truly an outrageous case. Agreed that it is anecdotal, but it illustrates exactly what’s wrong with the medical malpractice system. The lawyers try to say that it protects patients from unscrupulous and incompetent doctors, but in all likelihood this case alone has probably condemned thousands of men to unnecessary and uncomfortable prostate biopsies. If there’s any justice in the world the plaintiff’s attorney will have to suffer through a few of them himself.

Unfortunately tort reform as proposed with a cap on non-economic damages
isn’t going to prevent cases like this. What we need is a separate medical malpractice court that has trained jurists with the expertise to separate emotion from science.

Starting tomorrow, it’s PSA tests for everyone, no questions permitted! As an added bonus, I save a few extra minutes by not having to educate a patient on a difficult decision. Everybody wins!

Help me understand EBM.

Is the old way of handling patient problems:

Patient comes in with high fasting blood sugar, so you give them a pill and send them on their way?

Where EBM, is to send them to Diabetes Education so they can learn all the treatment options, pro and con and then they come back you and you decide together which way to treat it?

If so, I vote for EBM. Frankly, I live with my health care problems, not the doctor, and I have to deal with the consequences.