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Usually you've got less than a 50-50 chance of getting useful help from a doctor on any one visit.
In my case multiple doctor's treatment of my hypertension was largely useless because it followed the "typical" treatment. I only found what worked for me by accident.
In other cases my own research was far superior to a regular doctor's visit.
I can also quote the experience of a family member whose research into a major surgery paid huge dividends and if they had followed the advice of the first 2 doctors the surgery would very likely have failed.
The chances of getting correctly diagnosed and treated for a problem that is not obvious is surprisingly close to zero unless you have a very good doctor who has plenty of time for you.
I cannot believe that the top-voted comment right now is saying to not trust doctors, use an LLM to diagnose yourself and others.
I'll share mine.
Unusual severe one sided eye pain. Go to regular doctor's, explain, get told it's a "stye" and do hot compresses.
Problem gets worse, I go to urgent care. Urgent care doc takes one look at me and immediately sends me to the ER saying it's severe and she can't diagnose it because she is unqualified.
Go to ER, get seen by two specialists, a general practicioner and a gaggle of nurses. Get told it's a bad eye infection, put on strong steroids.
Problem gets worse (more slowly at least).
Schedule an urgent appoint with an opthalmologist. For some reason the scheduling lady just like, comprehends my urgency and gets me a same day appointment.
Opthalmologist does 5 minutes of exam, puts in some eye drops and pain is immediately gone. She puts me on a very serious steroid with instructions to dose hourly and visit her daily. Only reason I am seeing out of both eyes today.
As the top comment says, do not just "trust" Doctors. About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. People who are invested in their own care, who seek second opinions, who argue (productively) with their doctor have the best outcomes by far.
Nobody said not to work with doctors, but blindly trusting a single doctor will seriously harm your outcomes.
It's awful that you had a bad experience, but no. Nowhere near 70% of hospital deaths are from preventable mistakes.
I would also note that in your experience, you ended up trusting a different doctor (ophthalmologist), not ChatGPT. Second opinions from other qualified professionals is a thumbs up from me.
Just like I wouldn't go to my podiatrist to treat a complex case of rosecea, urgent care and GCP aren't for specialized, complex and rare cases.
I generally expect such counts to be under-representative. I'm also probably conflating cases of "this person was going to die regardless but the hospital screwed something up" with "this person was not going to die but did die because the hospital screwed up." It's not clear how any source would avoid that conflation though.
Sure sounds like an asspull stat. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence. Do you have a reference for that? Care to share?
The author of the blog post also mentioned they tried to avoid paying for an unnecessary visit to the doctor. I think the issue is somewhere else. As a European, personally I would go to the doctor and while sitting in the waiting room I would ask an LLM out of curiosity.
But what do I know.
But it is a sycophant and will confirm your suspicions, whatever they are and regardless if they're true.
In my experience to date, ChatGPT really is a sycophant. Claude can be moderately stubborn. Gemini is usually very stubborn, practically unmovable, unless you present new facts or make a rock solid counter-argument.
... Um what?
The only way to diagnose a fractured arm is an xray. You can suspect the arm is fractured (rotating it a few directions) but ultimately a muscle injury will feel identical to a fracture especially for a kid.
Please, if you suspect a fracture just take your kid to the doctor. Don't waste your time asking ChatGPT if this might be a fracture.
This just feels beyond silly to me imagining the scenario this would arise in. You have a kid crying because their arm hurts. They are probably protectively holding it and won't let you touch it. And your first instinct is "Hold on, let me ask chatgpt what it thinks. 'Hey chat GPT, my kid is her crying really loud and holding onto their arm. What could this mean?'"
What possessed you to waste time like that?
Using ChatGPT for medical issues is the single dumbest thing you can do with ChatGPT
Guess what happened.
And they mostly just come to a conclusion, rather than actionable advice I was able to pass on, like take a bag and avoid eating because they might want to operate soon.
But it's 2025, so old fashioned.