I have the impression that often the forum howls at people and urge them to go to the ER for ridiculous stuff, resulting in unnecessary expenses. This is another reason NOT to ask for medical advice around here, of course.
Overexaggerated though. Seems like you're seeing the superficial problem. But urging people to go to the ER over ridiculous stuff...is a bit ridiculous in itself. (You have time to post when you're in need of emergency healthcare? Hmm.)
Seems like you're insulting there. But you're not, I hope.
Guess how hard it is to actually diagnose someone? The communication between medical professional and the patient is eye to eye, personal contact. You need to see what is ailing the person, and learn his symptoms.
Here, you can at best only type out the symptoms. Say, for example, pneumonia. Now, let's read off what it is in wikipedia.
Typical symptoms include a cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. Diagnostic tools include x-rays and culture of the sputum.
Guess what? That also describes most
other diseases concerning your respiratory system. Let's give advice
on the forum for that and see if it progresses from a mild case to a completely cured case, eh?
Or something simpler: "Cough."
Would you love to post on the forum on :
> How frequent that occurrence is to you?
> Medical history regarding such?
> What your activities were or kind of environment you're in
And many other things which would...perhaps take hours or even days to settle the matter?
Secondly, if anything wrong happens to the person asking - hey, username/anonymity over the internet, eh? - then the problem is that:
> You cannot sue the person giving advice
> The person giving advice must be sued for malpractice.
> You do not even know if that person is a licensed practitioner or just someone reading it off a medical blog.
While diseases do have their general descriptions on what to find and stuff, on why we
do recommend seeing someone who can diagnose it is because they can do it correctly. That's it. No easy way out.
Well, other than prevention of course. That's always the best way out. Keeping healthy through exercise, and a balanced diet.
But on the monetary thing...really different per country. Unsure whether we can debate on that as its really different where I am. :/
tl;dr: Forum based Medical Advice.
Pros
> For minor cases, prrobably would be easy to fix...Probably.
Cons
> Hard to communicate - needs constant watch from other people who may not even know the situation at hand.
> Needs to be accurate and specific with what symptoms ail the person.
> Removes the
person-person communication factor, being a communication barrier inasmuch as none of the senses are actually sensing the disease and
all pertinent information is based on what the person types. This is the result of lack of contact - you can't talk casually. You can't give in the usual small talk which is usually associated with the usual check-ups (and
often forgotten or deemed as insignificant by most) but is usually the most important factor.
> The person needs
to know what exactly is ailing him/her and be able to
describe it well enough for a treatment to be given. The person could
screw up and get himself/herself into a worse scenario in this method.
> You don't even know if the other person is just trolling you, making a joke, apathetic, or guessing from a medical blog/information repository.
Now can we close this discussion before it devolves into trivial matters?
Or...y'know, just try to get a medical book and check on whether you're OK or not...or browse the net with the use of a search engine.
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Topic: Medical advice for all (Read 1979 times)