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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

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Scoundreller·

> On more than one occasion I have just had my doctor literally Google my symptoms.

There have been times I wished they would have done that.

I expect them to be resourceful rather than know everything off the top of their head.

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Med student here: oftentimes the attendings who are googling are usually doing it because the patient's symptoms don't fit with the most common illness "scripts" we develop in our mind and have ready for the 90% of patients who walk in the door. The google is a quick sanity check to see if these symptoms are within the range of "normal" for the most likely differential diagnoses (i.e. list of most likely diagnoses based on the patient's presentation).

That or those symptoms are exceptionally vague or uncommon enough that they warrant a quick refresher on google for leads on additional questions we should ask of patients (the most common offender here is rashes/skin lesions imo since they can literally be a manifestation of super simple "oh you just changed your shampoo" to "you have a rare autoimmune condition"...asking a comprehensive history from patients can help determine what tests to order).

That’s still way better than being told to take two Panadol and come back in the morning if your symptoms don’t improve. I mean, 99% of the time it’s a seasonal virus and that’s all you could/should do, but 0.1% of the time it’s meningitis and if you don’t go to the ICU then you die.

and so here is the problem of personalised care in a system where you can see upwards of 30 unfamiliar people a day: sometimes patients would rather I look things up, and others hate the idea of me touching any sort of technology in their presence, and it's nigh-impossible to tell which they are until a good way through the interview.

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