> I wouldn’t be so quick to indict an entire profession, especially given your admitted use of anecdotes.
This point is very well-taken, despite what my earlier comments may have sounded like, as is your point that I may be misunderstanding the scope of the problem as deficiencies in the solution process. Believe it or not, I am sensitive to these possibilities and didn't arrive at my current conclusion hastily or lightly. I didn't lazily interpret the system failing to solve my problem instantly as an indictment of the system, particularly given my small firsthand sample size. As I said, I've also talked to a lot of doctors who I'm acquainted with, and the only facts I'm working off of are fairly uncontroversial among them. I'm talking about specific failures like irrational institutional biases against some types of specialists (that both the doctors and the specialists that I've spoken to in a non-patient context admit exist).
When I say that a competent doctor would have been able to solve my problem _more_ quickly, it's because of the multiple challenges that required retreading the steps that a doctor is ostensibly trained in. The economy is built around paying people to do jobs that you are capable of but haven't spent the time to specialize in: it would be considered a failure of each industry if I needed to become a domain expert to get my cable fixed, or have my shirts tailored, or fly on an airplane. I get that medicine is devilishly more complicated than any of the above, but again, I'm talking about specific problems with either the ability or the will to take the time to apply that medical training through critical thinking. Since those with training abdicated their opportunity to do think critically, I had to bring (a very narrow form of that training) to the only person willing to think critically about the patient: me.
I don't think it's a very controversial statement that the healthcare system has lots of issues: the doctors I've spoken to about the way the system works and has worked for me pretty much all agree with me once they get over their defensiveness and realize that I'm not interested in putting most of the blame on individual doctors and their behavior within a difficult system. Slapdash, cookie-cutter engagement with patients is IMO a lot more reflective of the constraints that doctors operate under wrt time and the average patient[1] than it is a commentary on individual doctor's level of intelligence or something like that.
[1] hell, I don't even judge doctors with the all-too-common undercurrent of almost-contempt for their patients, given the average patient they probably have to deal with