[tzjmetron]

At the same time, it goes the other way too.

I cannot believe the number of doctors that I visited when I first got GERD, and all my questions were shot down while they prescribed PPI upon PPI. It only made my condition worse by the year.

Finally, I decided enough is enough, and did my own research, happened upon naturopathic materials, and experimented in a logical fashion (eliminating one trigger at a time, trying a new natural cure at a time) till I chanced upon probiotics - specifically Yakult which works best for me, and have been living a normal life since then.

The kicker is that if I had taken this approach from the start, my stomach and quality of life would have been much better from the start.

Sure, it's anecdotal, but it's a counter-example to your assertion which, frankly, smacks of derision for the thinking patient. You have to remember that doctors, like those in any other profession, come in a spectrum of qualifications, capabilities, and empathy.

[CapriciousCptl]

Physicians are human and subject to their own biases and mistakes. I could go on about how helpful patient/nursing/midlevel input is and has been to me personally in my career. But the point I'm trying to make here is that the shallow vs deep thinking shows up in medicine at obvious points and causes problems.

[jawilson2]

We also have our own biases. That physician has probably seen 100s of patients who have self-diagnosed something that turned out to be wrong, whereas the physician is usually correct about diagnoses. In this instance, the self-diagnosis was correct and the physician was wrong, but I would bet this is the exception, rather than the rule.