Re: Re: How much is TOO much to spend on CAM?
Ohmer said:
I certainly share your concern about these guys throwing money in a hole. However, I think “Understanding Who Uses CAM and Why†would be a great topic to study.
But, do we need to spend $440M to get this answer?
Ohmer said:
While I agree that most CAM does very little to actually solve medical problems in any measurable way, it’s still very popular and a lot of people are satisfied with it. It would be good for modern medicine to learn what these people are getting from the quacks that they are not getting from scientific medicine.
This is the same "argumentum ad populum" stance that politicians have used to create this agency.
Ohmer said:
If nothing else it might save someone from going to a homeopath when they have a deadly condition that needs real medicine.
TT, Did you talk about this much in med school? Is there much emphasis on making a patient happy in addition to fixing what is wrong? Could there be something to learn from the CAM practitioners in this area? Did that last question make your blood boil?
First, the doctor-patient relationship is heavily emphasized in medical school. The problem (as I see it) is that doctors-in-training very quickly become jaded when they get to the clinic with a lot of people who do not really want to hear your advice or make the changes necessary to get better. Our training is not at all focused on "making the patient happy" but in delivering the best advice and care we can, and as diplomatically as we can (of course). I think the thing we learn from CAM practitioners, in general, is that they give easy answers to people who don't want to make difficult life changes to really get better.
On the whole, I tend to think that people who end up at a CAM practitioner's office, who are truly sick, will only continue to get sicker. Eventually, they will end-up in the 'real' medical system. These are the people I want to protect from the dangers of delayed diagnosis and treatment.
The other two groups of folks who'll end-up at CAM practitioners are those who either aren't
really sick or for whom we can't do anything else for. The former I could personally care less about, honestly. This cohort tends to be the really difficult, histrionic, hypochondriacal, and unappreciate sort, and frankly the CAM practitioners can have them. They're the ones who tend to think that whatever they've read on a website is the diagnosis they have and are completely resistant to actually having you figure out what's going on. But, fortunately, such patients are few and far between.
As far as the latter group, it's sad that we run out of options. I'm less fault-finding with such patients who've run out of options and seek "alternative" treatment, but there are a lot of sharks out there who'll take money from them with no real chance at help. To me, we should focus on cracking down on such charlatans instead of spending money on an agency that, even if in a very small way, lends a sort of legitimacy to what they do.
Ohmer said:
Seriously, I am curious. Sometimes I think that a trip to the doctor is more unpleasant than it needs to be. Perhaps I’m just expecting too much.
Well, I think that there are bad doctors too. They may be great clinicians who know every single page of Harrison's and could figure out the most arcane and obscure of medical problems, but they have zero people skills. It takes a a real mastery to maintain patience with some patients. A lot of people who end up chronically in the hospital, for instance, are a little "off". Most are old and have serious medical problems. There's no amount of CAM, no matter what it is or how it's applied, that's going to really help them get out of the hospital. As far as the rest of the hypochondriacs of the world go, they're free to spend their money on whatever crap they believe will make them feel better. Just don't spend my tax dollars investigating it. And, in the meantime, they should stay out of my clinic if you're not really sick.
-TT
