Doctor’s DO Make Mistakes Because Medicine Is Not Always Like TV’s Grey’s Anatomy

Doctor’s DO make mistakes because medicine isn’t always like TV’s Grey’s Anatomy


Even though errors can occur when you visit your GP, if you're aware of the possibility then you can avoid being the next victim of a medical mishap


BARELY a week goes by without you hearing about some doctor making a horrible botch-up.

Specifically, that they missed or delayed a diagnosis, or got it completely wrong.



Hard to swallow … medicine isn’t how it seems on TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy — clever doctors using inspiration, skill and cutting-edge technology to make a brilliant diagnosis
Yet these are bright people who’ve been through years of expensive training.

So how do these mistakes happen?

I shall explain — and that way, hopefully, you can avoid being the next victim of “error”.

First, medicine isn’t how it seems on TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy — clever doctors using inspiration, skill and cutting-edge technology to make a brilliant diagnosis.

The reality is a lot messier. Medicine isn’t an exact science and can’t always give quick, accurate answers. Here’s an example.




On call … Dr Keith Hopcroft can give you the right advice to make sure you avoid medical mishaps when you see your GP
Guess what the early signs of flu are? Correct. Fever, headache, aching all over and feeling like death warmed up.

Now, guess the signs of early meningitis.

Well done. Fever, headache, aching all over and feeling like death warmed up.

OK, there might be other clues — sometimes, meningitis will cause a non-blanching rash. But in the early stages, flu and meningitis can look identical. And your GP has nothing else to go on.

He has no magic meningitis-ometer. And he can’t send every fluey individual to hospital “just in case” — that would make the queues in A&E start somewhere near your front door.

So when he says it’s probably flu, he really does mean probably — given that flu is, thankfully, much commoner than meningitis.

But that “probably” also means if you’re getting worse — say, you become confused or drowsy — you need an urgent reassessment and, probably, an ambulance. If you don’t realise this, you could become that next, “I had meningitis and the doc said it was just flu” headline.




Tough call … Medicine isn’t an exact science and can’t always give quick, accurate answers
Second, we docs learn much of our trade by reading up on it, for hours on end. But ill people don’t always do what the textbooks say they should.

Another example: a heart attack always causes chest pain, right? Wrong.

There’s such a thing as a silent infarct — a heart attack that causes no pain at all.

Tricky, isn’t it? No wonder we can get it wrong.

The message here is, if you really don’t feel right and you’re convinced something’s up — even if you can’t put your finger on it — tell us. We’re likely to take that gut feeling seriously.

Third, we docs sometimes have to let time pass to know what’s going on. Had diarrhoea for two days? Almost certainly gastroenteritis. But had it for two months? Now it could be something else, including cancer. Without other symptoms, like blood in your poo, it may only be the fact that it’s gone on so long that rings alarm bells.



Textbook ... docs learn much of our trade by reading up on it, for hours on end
And, again, we can’t send everyone with two days’ worth of diarrhoea to the hospital, just in case — that would overload the system.

If you don’t understand this, though, and you’re the unlucky one with the Big C, it might seem like your diagnosis was delayed. Worse still, you might cause your own delays if you don’t see the doc again when your symptoms fail to settle — as per the old GP cliché, “Come back if you’re feeling no better”.

And fourth, and maybe most important, we docs are human. We have bad days and we make mistakes. You could try replacing us with protocols and software programmes, but that would be a very costly system and cause a lot of unnecessary anxiety, as anyone who’s Googled symptoms will tell you.

Besides, computers have a rubbish bedside manner.

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