Most UK GPs Have Prescribed Placebos 240
Techmeology writes "In a survey of UK GPs, 97% said they'd recommended placebo treatments to their patients, with some doctors telling patients that the treatment had helped others without telling them that it was a placebo. While some doctors admitted to using a sugar pill or saline injection, some of the placebos offered had side effects such as antibiotic treatments used as placebos for viral infections."
Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Informative)
antibiotic treatments used as placebos for vial infections
I'm sorry but a medical professional should flat out know better.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree; using antibiotics where they aren't needed is despicable.
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Have they tried:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfonamide_(medicine) [wikipedia.org]
If not, Phage therapy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance [wikipedia.org]
Good luck to your friend.
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Have they tried:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfonamide_(medicine) [wikipedia.org]
If not, Phage therapy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance [wikipedia.org]
Good luck to your friend.
Phages are very bacteria specific though. You have to isolate one that infects that specific strain of bacteria, which is hard to do since there's a hell of a lot (they just all used to die to penicillin - hyperbolically speaking).
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Of course they know better.
It's that they choose to do it so it makes it easier to deal with patients.
The irony of professional regulation is that we restrict medical professionals, grant them monopolies, impose excess educational requirements... and then it turns out most of them don't practice to that level.
Sure your family doctor might theoretically be better than say a nurse practitioner, but most barely spend any time with you to actually be better (at least in Canada).
Sure theoretically, they are guar
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There are side effects that can be caused by unnecessarily prescribing antibiotics. Furthermore, they're a bloody expensive form of placebo.
Doctors that prescribe placebos should be prescribing actual placebos - pills or injections that are inert (and cheap to by wholesale). This to do otherwise is in violation of the Hippocratic oath.
There's nothing wrong with a doctor prescribing inert placebos though. A doctor is employed to use science to help sick people and there
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1) ask you what is wrong
2) search for the symptoms on WebMD for 5 minutes
3) come back and tell you what WebMD said (make it sound like it was from memory of course)
4) prescribe the most expensive drug listed as a possible treatment on WebMD
5) Profit!
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A friend of mine who was trained in homeopathic medicine* once tried to tell my wife to take a pill for a problem (don't remember what). She asked what it was, because she has a few allergies. He said don't worry, it's a placebo, and still tried to convince her to take it.
Hopefully these GP's had more effective training than my friend.
* two of the preceding words should have "quotes" around them...
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antibiotic treatments used as placebos for vial infections
I'm sorry but a medical professional should flat out know better.
Why?
Much of the time people are prescribed antibiotics they do not really need them anyway as their own immune system will do the job in the end anyway.
Plenty of people go to the doctor demanding antibiotics just because they have a cold and thinking they will help. If the doctor gave all of these retards antibiotics the few effective ones we have remaining would be depleted in no time, especially as the patient would stop taking them as soon as they felt better instead of finishing the course they were pre
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In this case why shouldn't the doctor just send them home with something that is far cheaper than his time and makes them feel better
If that's what was happening, then you'd have a point. But that's not. What's happening is that the doctor is sending them home with something whose primary effect will probably be contribution to development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, at least as far as the public is concerned. But to the person, the primary effect is damage to their bacterial colony, which has negative repercussions for their health! It notably, negatively, and immediately affects the immune system and the digestive system.
A doctor
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Absolutely. Any physician who prescribes an antibiotic for a viral infection should lose his license immediately. And he should probably end up in jail. We are running out of antibiotics, and when we do, it's back to medieval life expectancy. Antibiotic abuse has the potential to kill millions of people.
IMO, every recreational drug should be legally available over the counter. But every antibiotic should be extremely closely monitored. Make people show up to a clinic for their antibiotics, the way meth
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's more down to the public not knowing what antibiotics are used for and demanding them where they are not needed.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with antibiotics, rather, is that you have to finish the entire run lest you'll end up merely training your infection to become resistant. So it's not strictly a problem of prescribing the stuff too often; it's that plus far too many people starting to feel fine then not finishing the cure.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's both of those things.
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Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't that antibiotics are used in animal husbandry. I have no problem with a vet prescribing antibiotics to save a sick cow or horse. Treat the cow the same way you would a human and it will be fine in a few days. The problem occurs when they chronically give antibiotics to a lot of animals that aren't sick. First, that's abuse of the drugs and the animals. Second, it doesn't kill off all the bacteria. It just gives a slight advantage to bacteria that are more resistant, thus creating the selection pressure to create resistant strains. Third, the antibiotics get in the milk and meat so resistant bacteria grow in that.
The law should say: (1) you can't give antibiotics to animals that are not sick (2) you can't sell edible animal products from animals that have been treated with antibiotics until after a waiting period (e.g. 10 days) to ensure that the antibiotics have cleared from their systems. (There would have to be randomized testing of products to enforce this.) (3) FDA clearance should be required to use drugs in animals at all and it wouldn't be given for classes of drugs that are needed to fight otherwise-resistant strains in humans.
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The problem with antibiotics, rather, is that you have to finish the entire run lest you'll end up merely training your infection to become resistant. So it's not strictly a problem of prescribing the stuff too often; it's that plus far too many people starting to feel fine then not finishing the cure.
Moreover, recent studies show that antibiotics kill a lot of the "good" bacteria in the gut, and it takes some time to recover, if at all. During that time, the patient is vulnerable to various other diseases. Some might even be caused by a lack of the right bacteria.
See poop transplants [nature.com]
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The problem with antibiotics, rather, is that you have to finish the entire run lest you'll end up merely training your infection to become resistant. So it's not strictly a problem of prescribing the stuff too often; it's that plus far too many people starting to feel fine then not finishing the cure.
Moreover, recent studies show that antibiotics kill a lot of the "good" bacteria in the gut, and it takes some time to recover, if at all. During that time, the patient is vulnerable to various other diseases. Some might even be caused by a lack of the right bacteria.
See poop transplants [nature.com]
There are "balancing" antibiotics which are actually used for this purpose as well - two separate ones with different effects. I've been on them in fact, and it did wonders for some persistent issues I'd been having.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Insightful)
No qualified doctor should be prescribing medication just because a patient "demands" it. That would be both a fundamental failure of their duty of care to the patient and an abuse of their authority to legally prescribe controlled substances.
All of this goes double for antibiotics, because there is a real danger of overuse combined with people's tendency not to complete full courses of treatment contributing to the development of resistant strains like MRSA.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a European I was horrified to see that prescription medicines are routinely and frequently advertised on television in the USA instructing the viewer to ask their doctor to prescribe the medicine.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a European I was horrified to see that prescription medicines are routinely and frequently advertised on television in the USA instructing the viewer to ask their doctor to prescribe the medicine.
As an American I am equally horrified. Advertising by big pharma companies is one of the reasons medications are so expensive here. Also, I can't imagine telling a doctor what to prescribe. If he/she doesn't know already, then I'm going to the wrong doctor.
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Antibiotics and most medications are not controlled substances. It is not illegal to purchase or possess them. What is controlled, however, is the SALE of antibiotics for human medical use. So this means you can import them from some jurisdiction where you can purchase them (the internet, or across the Mexican border), or possibly get the same medication from a agricultural supply company intended for veterinary use.
This is quite different from "controlled substances" such as amphetamines, narcotics, benzod
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The main pressure on doctors is getting through their long daily list of patients as quickly as they can, and they get their fair share of people who have self-limiting conditions - it's very common for somebo
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In the UK they are usually extremely reluctant to prescribe anti biotics. Because health system in the UK is completely free, many people go for minor issues and think they know better than the dr, where is they had to pay, they would not go. In these instances, a placebo is probably the perfect solution.
I have lived in countries where health was provided by insurance and just a completely private system. In these two other methods of providing healthcare, the Drs always, without fail were more likely to pr
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Because health system in the UK is completely free
Sadly, that isn't quite true. Politicians like to use phrases like "free at the point of need", in the sense that if you need to call an ambulance after an accident or visit your GP to discuss some symptoms you won't normally be charged anything. But if my doctor prescribes me some routine medication that I go down and collect from the local pharmacy, I have to pay the standard NHS prescription charge of £7.65 (soon to be £7.85) each time.
(I should acknowledge, however, that many people do get h
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No qualified doctor should be prescribing medication just because a patient "demands" it.
Well in this case their not, their shutting them up and getting them out of their surgery by prescribing them something which is not actually medication.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. This happened to me before, but it was an ear infection and I guess the doctor didn't know if it was viral or bacterial, so maybe he was just using a "shotgun technique".
Yes. I doubt that doctors are insincerely prescribing antibiotics as placebos. I expect it is more of a case of not being able to fully rule out a bacterial infection so they prescribe the anti-biotics to cover all their bases and to help the patient feel like their problems are being taken seriously.
My guess -- it is most common with ear infections for kids (which are the most common reason kids to go to the doctor). Societal pressure on mothers nowadays is super intense - it is hard for a mom to accept doing nothing but wait for the viral infection to run its course when their kid is crying all the time. And since a minority of ear infections really are bacterial, but testing for the type of infection is difficult, the doctor prescribes a mild anti-biotic (usually amoxicillin). That makes mom feel like she's done everything she can for her kid and if it really was bacterial it actually helps, if it wasn't bacterial the side-effects are rare and mild so the risk of making the kid worse is tiny. It is a win-win except for the long-term affect on rates of anti-biotic resistance.
I say this having seen my sister, a recent mother go through this stuff. Before the kid was born she was super on board with all the free-range kids type stuff, but once that baby popped out and she had to experience it first hand, it was a different story. To her credit she's been able to back off the helicopter type stuff as unavoidable accidents have happened and she saw that the kid came out fine. But the pressure from society to be a perfect mom teams up with those mom hormones and long-term thinking tends to be the loser. She still hasn't given the kid peanut butter, she's waiting to do it when she's in the lobby of the pediatrician's office - and now the research is starting to suggest the longer you wait to expose them, the more likely the kid is to develop a peanut allergy...
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:5, Informative)
The reason doctors prescribe antibiotics inappropriately in family medicine is almost never due to ignorance. It's because it is what the patient expects and not delivering that is damaging to the doctor/patient relationship. In the long run that damage can have a catastrophic impact on the patient's health.
Source: I'm a doctor.
Short sighted (Score:3)
It's because it is what the patient expects and not delivering that is damaging to the doctor/patient relationship. In the long run that damage can have a catastrophic impact on the patient's health.
That's incredibly short sighted. By prescribing unneeded anti-biotics you are encouraging anti-biotic resistance which in the long term can damage the health not only your patient but also of millions of others. Not only that but you risk damaging the doctor-patient relationship irretrievably because you are effectively lying to the patient that they need a treatment which they do not. If they ever find out not only have you destroyed that relationship but, if I was the patient, I'd report you to the relev
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect it is more of a case of not being able to fully rule out a bacterial infection so they prescribe the anti-biotics to cover all their bases and to help the patient feel like their problems are being taken seriously.
It's not just that. One of my colleagues was given antibiotics for flu a few years ago. He asked the doctor why they were giving him antibiotics for a viral infection, and the doctor told him that there was a bacterial chest infection going around and people whose immune systems were weakened by the flu weren't able to fight it off. Having two lung infections in a row could easily cause serious damage, and so they prescribed antibiotics to avoid this.
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Yes. I doubt that doctors are insincerely prescribing antibiotics as placebos. I expect it is more of a case of not being able to fully rule out a bacterial infection so they prescribe the anti-biotics to cover all their bases and to help the patient feel like their problems are being taken seriously.
That's happening everywhere. The problem is partly with the patients being quite impatient with their doctors. All *my* doctor did when I came to him with e.g. a a severely sore throat or a sinusitis was to tell me that yes, he could give me antibiotics, but he would recommend I try some other things first: inhalation, drinking a lot of water, avoiding eating and drinking anything the most common bacteria would love. Basically for a sore throat: no dairy products, no sugar, instead sour food and drinks.
Of c
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll always remember the look my UK doctor and I shared. It was pure mutual understanding. He said "we'll try these homeopathic pills" and then we shared eye contact. I knew the pills were bollocks; he knew they were bollocks.
We both explained to my daughter that these pills would cure her forever and the nice white sugar pills in the fancy packet did just that. She hasn't complained of an ear infection since.
It's all good.
Re:Antibiotic Placebo? (Score:4, Informative)
Editors schmeditors (Score:2)
Indeed. The correct way to deal with dirty bottles is to run them through the dishwasher.
Re:Editors schmeditors (Score:5, Informative)
As a physician, I agree.
The problem is that we are now subject to an "objective" review [pressganey.com], where the MBA CEO's of hospitals and health care systems have to measure and quantify everything. The problem is this is not a normal customer-seller relationship....this is more like going to the lawyer for advice (Gawd, did I just compare physicians to lawyers????), you are seeking "expert advice" and when it may not be what you want or expect, a rift develops. The physician (rarely) denies something because they are being a jerk, they are (usually) doing it in the patient's best interest. However, with the need to maximize your PG scores, people are acquiescing. Yes, I know this is not a new problem and pre-dates the PG score, but this is a perfect example of "market forces" in medicine, and why people who think medicine is a business like manufacturing cars are dead wrong....it IS a business, but unlike just about any other out there.
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If you'd never had asthma, and could barely breathe, then I'd go with the antibiotics. (You you were an asthmatic, the steroids would probably have helped by themselves.)
Even bronchitis is usually viral and pneumonias can be too, but if something's interfering with your ABCs (airway, breathing, circulation) then it's best to be safe.
But yours was a relatively rare (for an individual person) case. Often it's guys who say "I've had 2 days of a sore throat and runny nose, and I want something to make me feel b
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I'm still not sure what to think - whether it was a good idea to cave and take the antibiotics (it might have taken alot longer to heal otherwise) - or if it was a bad thing to gamble on it *possibly* not being a virus.
Did you actually finish the treatment? By what you are saying, it was "pretty much cleared up", not "cleared up". If antibiotics kill "pretty much" all the bacteria but not all of them, the survivors have a chance to produce resistant bacteria. If you kill all of them, no chance of producing resistant bacteria. People who stop their treatment as soon as they feel better and not follow through to the end are the ones causing the problems with bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
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When it comes to chests, take the antibiotics. You really, really, really, do not want a series bacterial chest infection to develop. That's the sort of thing that lead to stuff like sepsis or having bits of your lung surgically removed.
Wrong, most chest infections get better on their own with no need for antibiotics: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Chest-infection-adult/Pages/Introduction.aspx [www.nhs.uk]
You should only look for things like antibiotics if you have pneumonia (ie: a real bacterial chest infection), most chest infections though are only viral and your body will deal with this on its own in a few days if you give it the chance.
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... the patient will be feeling fine in no time.
Yes, right up until they contract MRSA.
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In England, if you argue with the Doctor too much they can actually suspend your medical coverage. Sad but true.
Do you have a reputable source for this or did you just make this up?
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People get banned from surgeries all the time - it's your word against the practice manager as to why you were banned. And if the books of the other surgeries in your catchment area are closed, your medical coverage is effectively suspended.
Not a Placebo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not a Placebo (Score:5, Informative)
The point here is that antibiotics won't do anything for a viral illness - but patients will demand antibiotics for anything and everything until they are blue in the face, many don't accept that the "wonder drug" class of antibiotics won't actually do anything for them.
My wife is a GP, and we literally just had this conversation :) GPs in the UK get 8 minutes with each patient, they can't afford to spend it arguing with the patient, so they issue antibiotics which have already lost their effectiveness due to prior overuse - we aren't talking about threatening working antibiotics.
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GPs in the UK get 8 minutes with each patient, they can't afford to spend it arguing with the patient
It takes less than a second to say "no". If I came in to your wife's office and demanded oxycodone, what would she do? Why shouldn't she do the same thing when a patient demands antibiotics?
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Why do they all think they're right? Because there's been a decades long propaganda war against opiates, and there hasn't been one against antibiotic abuse, which is far, far, far more dangerous. Let her complain, let them all complain. Their complaints aren't valid, and should in no way affect your employment.
If you prescribe an antibiotic for a virus, even once, you deserve to go to jail.
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You realise that if you present the right symptoms to a doctor, they will give you the drugs you want even if they think you are exhibiting drug-seeking behaviour?
Patients go elsewhere until they get what they want - I have a fantastic story about that, but thats for another day.
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I can see my GP almost as much as I want when I have an appointment, certainly more than eight minutes and I know they are not tied to any ridiculous arbritrary timetable.
We can do that too if we want to pay for medical care like you have to. He was talking about seeing a GP on the NHS, if you go private you can spend as much time your GP as you can afford.
When you guys in the US talk about our health service you always miss the point about us being able to get treatment in the same way as you when ever we like just by paying in the same way you do. It is a fall back system, you can't opt out of it but you can choose to use something else instead.
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Whether it's a placebo or not rather depends on what you're trying to treat. Sugar pills aren't a placebo if you're hypoglycemic.
No shit.
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A placebo must have no pharmacological effect to be designated as such
I guess you've never heard of an active placebo [wikipedia.org]? Those have a definite pharmacological effect, just not the main effect of the drug being mimicked.
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What do you mean by no pharmacological effect though?
See: "Neurobiological Mechanisms of the Placebo Effect"
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/45/10390.full [jneurosci.org]
In an experimental model of pain (Amanzio and Benedetti, 1999), the placebo response could be blocked by naloxone if it was induced by strong expectation cues, whereas if the expectation cues were reduced, it was insensitive to naloxone. In the same study, if the placebo response was obtained after exposure to opioid drugs, it was naloxone reversible, whereas if it was obtained after exposure to non-opioid drugs, it was naloxone insensitive.
Vial infections (Score:2, Funny)
"such as antibiotic treatments used as placebos for vial infections.""
With proper sterilization techniques, you wouldn't get infections from vials in the first place.
(or use new vials so there's no risk of contamination - which they do in US hospitals since they charge so much they have new everything.
I guess that might not be an option on the NHS
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Heh. Your response made sense, except that it was probably a typo of "viral infection".
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ever tried to get rid of a vial? only way is to crush it and then it's no longer a viable for being a vial.
boiling doesn't work. radiating doesn't work. antibiotics don't work. hell, once I tried sulfuric acid and it had no effect!
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"such as antibiotic treatments used as placebos for vial infections.""
With proper sterilization techniques, you wouldn't get infections from vials in the first place. (or use new vials so there's no risk of contamination - which they do in US hospitals since they charge so much they have new everything. I guess that might not be an option on the NHS
I think you are misinterpreting the summary. I suspect the author was editorializing a bit and meant to talk about "vile infections." God knows they can knock you around, even with a good placebo.
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"such as antibiotic treatments used as placebos for vial infections.""
With proper sterilization techniques, you wouldn't get infections from vials in the first place.
You entirely missed the point: vials are the infecting bit, not the vector/carrier. As in: "crawling with or being overwhelmed by vials".
And, yes, antibiotics are useless for this case, as vials are usually made of glass and glass is not affected by antibiotics. A better treatment is the copious application of vigorous hammer strokes over all the vial infected parts of the patient.
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With proper sterilization techniques
Woah, hey, sounding dangerously Daily Mail there...
you wouldn't get infections from vials in the first place.
Oh. That kind of sterilization. Okay.
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Funnily enough I recall a case of "vial infection", where a patient was administered a dose from a vial that had had minute fractures in it, causing its contents to be compromised, and the resulting injection severely disabled the patient (IIRC it was in the back bone, and he was left paralysed).
His lawsuit was dismissed, as I recall, because the administration could not have know about those minute fractures, and had otherwise taken all reasonable care to maintain those vials in proper condition.
Just a int
Placebo Effect (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just Doctors but the NHS (Score:3)
The British National Health service runs entire hospitals dedicated to placebo treatment. [bbc.co.uk]
Doctors need to really talk with their patients (Score:5, Interesting)
A family friend, an old and wise ear, nose and throat doctor, mentioned at a dinner party, that about 25% of his patients had an emotional problem, not a physical one. He lamented that younger doctors did not take time to ask patients questions about how their life, family and job status were going. The younger doctors would just try to prescribe pills too quickly, and refer the patient to a specialist, like himself. A neurologist and another doctor at the table agreed.
Of course, now many doctors have time constraints for patient visits imposed by insurance companies. So prescribing a placebo is the easier choice than really talking to the patients, and dealing with more paperwork, for an extended consultation.
That was in the US; I don't know how that is in the UK.
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My guess is none. The insurance company may only pay $X for a particular diagnosis, but they aren't limiting how much the doctor could chose to be with the patient. The doctor could chose to stay longer, but there's this need to be profitable in order to stay in business that necessitates moving from patient to patient in a timely manner.
Seriously though, why should the doctor ask about life, family, job st
I'd bet that 25% is actually 0%. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd bet that 25% is actually 0%.
Psychology got its start from a doctor who found a cure for some particular illness, but found that only about half of his patients responded to the cure and improved. So what did he take from this? Was his cure only effective half of the time? Did the other patients actually have some other illness that simply had the same symptoms? No, nothing like that. Instead, he assumed, there was actually nothing wrong with the patients at all, and it was all psychological.
Of cour
Health Ignorant Public (Score:2)
The major issue is that people as a rule are lazy so expect a simple quick fix to all their problems in life.
Illness, pop a pill
Fat, gastric band
etc, etc
As a previous poster mentioned most problems that a GP comes across will be fought and fixed by your body with a little assistance of paracetamol or ibuprofen to keep down temps.
We have become too reliant on an easy fix and need to return to eating properly, exercising and not being too clean.....
Build up your natural ability to fight illness, only go to a
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It's not just stuff for GP's, either.
How many people carry "headache tablets"(i.e. paracetamol / aspirin) around with them? How many rely on things like Lemsip and other cold remedies?
Fact is, they make almost zero difference to how you feel or how long you'll have the headache/cold. (I make a specific exception for migraine, but then you should be having your proper migraine tablets and not headache tablets).
The amount of people who carry this stuff around with them all day, every day is scary. That's b
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Yeah, cos what I said is that there's no medicinal use whatsoever for them, and nobody ever sees any benefit. "a LOT of their action is ENTIRELY placebo...".
You're comparing a tested, reasoned use of something that I didn't mention (ibuprofen), in a comparison against other drugs that has a significant, noticeable health benefit for yourself against people who carry 48-packs of the things in a handbag and take one every time they feel a little out of sorts (and get through a pack or more a week, in some ca
Research (Score:2)
Does anybody else research drugs you are given, or do people just swallow whatever the doctor gives them?
Doc Martin would never do this (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Martin [wikipedia.org]
UK doctors are prescribing placebos? (Score:2)
Glad to see they use things that work!
suspicious (Score:2)
Re:Is this reflected in your medical records? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PLACEBOS (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 8.
Re:antibioticas for viral = bad (Score:5, Informative)
While antibiotics won't stop a viral infection, one thing they can help with when infected is to prevent other infections. For instance, a bad viral lung infection might be treated with antibiotics to prevent an opportunistic bacterium like pneumonia from attacking.
And yeah, pharmacies used to carry placebos. When I worked in a pharmacy long ago, I did indeed dispense them. It was labelled with the chemical name (sucrose, lactose 50mg, etc), but may have been given unlabelled as a unit dose.
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im all for giving a placebo to people where appropriate, they have been shown to be a powerful cure-all.
PLacebos have been shown to be effective at reducing patient reported symptoms. They are not very effective at reducing measurable symptoms, and not effective at improving outcomes.
On the other hand, they are effective at reducing the patient's trust in their doctor, and bringing back the doctor paternalism of yore.
Measurable outcomes vs Perceived outcomes (Score:2, Troll)
While we're on the topic why don't we just get it all out:
Mental illness is not a real illness.
People who suffer mental illness should just get the f*ck over it.
Real illness can be seen, touched, measured.
Placebos don't work, subjects just overwhelmingly report that they do.
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"People who suffer mental illness should just get the f*ck over it."
I used to be like you. Sincerely hoping you get through life without finding out first hand how wrong your statement is.
One day I was just stressed, it's life, keep strong, get over it, the next I was a man grasping for a chance for the rational mind to regain control. I'd love nothing more than to just get the f*ck over it.
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I wrote nothing about mental illness. Mental illness is certainly real illness, and the fact that it is looked upon as "not real illness" leads to no end of hurt, like people refusing to get the treatment that could help them because "are you saying I'm CRAZY??!!?!" in addition to "why don't they just get the f*ck over it".
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Then what is stopping you?
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Your mental illness appears to be stupidity. Sadly, there's no known cure, but I can offer you some pills to help you feel better.
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the rub. A lot of people show up at the doctor for things which will take n days to go away - with or without treatment. The common cold, for example. They won't accept NOT getting any prescription and will hop from doctor to doctor until they get one.
Now the best thing would be educating the public about this issue. This is very, very hard to do. Barring that, it is actually better for the patients and cheaper to just prescribe placebos - they DO work in this case! (up to the placebo effect, as any other medicine would).
Unfortunately there is another issue involved: Most placebos (at least in Germany) are homeopatic. This lends credibility to the whole homeopatic industry, and THEY are nothing but quacks. And THAT is a bad thing.
So - either way you lose.
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Here's the rub. A lot of people show up at the doctor for things which will take n days to go away - with or without treatment. The common cold, for example. They won't accept NOT getting any prescription and will hop from doctor to doctor until they get one.
Can we give them a cyanide placebo in these instances?
Obviously these are the sort of idiots who should be culled for the benefit of the rest of us who have positive IQ's :D
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This is not fraud. The placebo-effect is very real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Placebo_effect_and_the_brain [wikipedia.org]
In fact, the use of placebos in controlled studies may even harm their outcome due to this placebo effect. A good controlled medicine-effectiveness study should therefore consist of at 3 groups: one getting the drug, one getting the placebo and one getting nothing at all.
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Get a new doctor.
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Prescribing a placebo can heal the patient. How is that unethical?
There's strong research backing this, btw.
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The placebo effect has been objectively measured as being able to heal a patient.
It can and does happen.
Go check the research. It's very real. This is why for instance homeopathy treatments are assessed against whether they heal the patient, they're assessed against whether they heal the patient MORE than a placebo.
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The placebo effect has been objectively measured as being able to heal a patient.
Nonsense. The only effect of a placebo is in someone's imagination. It might in some cases such as chronic pain take someone's mind off their condition sufficiently that they experience relief. Otherwise it does nothing. It absolutely under no circumstances heals anything. This is precisely why double blind controlled studies are tested against placebos. If one group receives a sugar pill and the other group receives the actual drug, the efficacy (or harm) of the actual drug can be measured accurately, acco
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Homeopathy treatments have been tested repeatedly against placebo and there is no difference in response. Not surprisingly since they're just sugar pills and water.
Usually just water, but yes, that's my point. They're tested against the Placebo effect _because_ it demonstrates that they do fuck-all that wouldn't be possible with a placebo.
Nonsense. The only effect of a placebo is in someone's imagination.
Hmm. No. http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/April/putting-the-placebo-effect-to-work [harvard.edu]
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I agree.
Scientists tend to dismiss the placebo effect. We should be studying it. Trying to understand the mechanisms behind it, instead of taking more potentially harmful substances into our bodies.
Medical scientists study the placebo effect all the time. It is one of the most highly studied phenomenons in medicine, we study it with every condition we search for a drug for.
The point of the placebo effect is that it is entirely psychological. It is not clinically real - it is not physiological. It's important because a great deal of medicine is asking how the patient feels to diagnose, but we also know that simply paying attention to people often makes them feel better. If they have an actual underlyin
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It is not clinically real - it is not physiological.
I'm not sure how you define "clinically real" but the placebo effect has been demonstrated to change brain patterns, lead to (e.g.) hormone generation and change perception of pain.
I'd call those clinical outcomes, and physiological changes.
for something like a bacterial infection this is potentially fatal.
Absolutely. But placebos aren't being prescribed for bacterial infections, lethal viruses, cancer, broken limbs and heart attacks.
Actually, they probably are part of some cancer treatments. But only as part of it.
Using a known effect to achieve genuine outcomes is an exc
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Fourth: Placebos can be effective EVEN IF THE PERSON KNOWS IT"S A PLACEBO
Go back and read that a second time to make sure you get the gist of it.
The link is on my work computer (thus, not available at this time) but there are actual studies that demonstrate this fact. Maybe being under the care of someone else is all that is needed to do it, but a placebo is one of the tools that should be used (and explored) in medicine.