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A review by sellnow_hannah
Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
slow-paced
2.0
I am both a healthcare professional (family practice PA) and a woman who's had negative experiences as a patient.
Sex and gender bias is a significant problem in medicine and an important one to explore. But I found this book needlessly repetitive and while well researched, its clear the author has limited experience in the field so some of her points are off-base:
- She seems to assert that mental health problems can't cause physical symptoms and wants providers to keep ordering tests indefinitely to find a physical cause, which in practice often doesn't make sense and is wildly expensive.
- she seems to not realize that the vast majority of clinicians are not researchers so we follow established guidelines instead of going rogue and ordering tests insurance won’t pay for.
- her discussion about opioids lacked nuance. We are in the midst of an opioid crisis and she barely skimmed the challenges providers have in treating pain in the context of the opioid epidemic.
- she did not even mention the way the medical establishment forces providers to see more and more patients in less and less time as a reason patients feel dismissed and not heard. Then she blames that dismissal on individual providers instead of the medical system that completely over works providers and expects us to somehow do complex and thorough care in a 15 minute appointment.
- the tone of the writing was pretty angry and based on outrage which for me as a healthcare provider was hard to read and not take a just little personally.
Read for League of Women Voters of Larimer County Informed Citizens Book Club
- She seems to assert that mental health problems can't cause physical symptoms and wants providers to keep ordering tests indefinitely to find a physical cause, which in practice often doesn't make sense and is wildly expensive.
- she seems to not realize that the vast majority of clinicians are not researchers so we follow established guidelines instead of going rogue and ordering tests insurance won’t pay for.
- her discussion about opioids lacked nuance. We are in the midst of an opioid crisis and she barely skimmed the challenges providers have in treating pain in the context of the opioid epidemic.
- she did not even mention the way the medical establishment forces providers to see more and more patients in less and less time as a reason patients feel dismissed and not heard. Then she blames that dismissal on individual providers instead of the medical system that completely over works providers and expects us to somehow do complex and thorough care in a 15 minute appointment.
- the tone of the writing was pretty angry and based on outrage which for me as a healthcare provider was hard to read and not take a just little personally.
Read for League of Women Voters of Larimer County Informed Citizens Book Club