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Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

I feel that patients are qualified to comment on medical standards of care, also.

I am sure that you’re a good doctor, but to answer your question, yes, there are many doctors who operate negligently, to some extent. I had a long experience at one of the major hospitals in the US following drastic weight loss and months of pain. A major hospital did various tests, and ended up telling me I had “health anxiety”. It turned out that I was actually developing LADA, a form of type 1 diabetes. Since I had already been diagnosed with celiac and was having primarily digestive symptoms, the tests they did focused on the digestive tract and they never investigated other causes. I had to finally go into diabetic ketoacidosis before anyone figured it out.

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Unfortunately you are confusing “medical standard of care” with the “standards of medical care”.

“The most common legal definition of standard of care is how similarly qualified practitioners would have managed the patient’s care under the same or similar circumstances. This is not simply what the majority of practitioners would have done.”

Source: https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/map/StandardofCare.html

As you can see, patients are not qualified to comment on the medical standard of care and unfortunately how you “feel” isn’t a consideration in the decision as this is established in case law.

To your larger point, if you are dealing with a negligent doctor the place to address it is at a medical licensing board. With a single paragraph complaint they will gut a doctor for diagnosing anyone with “anemia”.

Instead of spreading partially misremembered stories online and spreading vitriol I suggest you use the many, free channels available for recourse if you feel your doctors actions constitute malpractice.

I appreciate these things can all sound similar and be confusing. Perhaps best to leave to the professionals dedicating 10+ years to learning the trade.

How would you have done your diagnostic workup differently than what was done - specifically?

What was the negligence what was the diagnostic smoking gun that was missed?

> I feel that patients are qualified to comment on medical standards of care, also.

Patients like doctors is a huge group that should not be generalized - but health and healthcare literacy is pretty bad so by and large, no, patients can comment on standards of care but they aren’t qualified to do so.

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