Do you listen to everything your pediatrician tells you?

Ema of 5

Wed, Aug 17 2016, 7:19 pm

Quote:

I definitely do NOT listen to my kids' pediatrician. I do my own "research." I make decisions solely based on what other moms say, especially ones on natural-mommy -type blogs. If my doctor says something is safe, but my friend's aunt's babysitter says something is toxic, I will STEER CLEAR. There is nothing better than hearsay and scaremongering when it comes to your children's health. Doctors may have completed between 8-15 years of training, but I read the Internet! Therefore, Mom knows best.

I know you already outed yourself, but I wanted to respond to this. I have used the Internet to do research- to read studies. As a mother, I get gut feelings. I don't take my kids to the doctor when they have a cough unless they have other symptoms. I don't take my kids in for a cold unless they are oozing green stuff or have other symptoms. Doctors are human, like everyone else, and are quite capable of making a mistake. I'll give you an example. One yom tov, one of my kids was sitting on my lap. I felt something hard at the back, center of his head. When I moved his hair aside, I saw a white bump. I took him to a neighbor who was a nurse. She said it looked like a small pebble but she was scared to remove it in her house because there was no way to know if it would bleed, or how much. I took him to the ped on Sunday and he said it looked like a calcification, and I should follow up with a dermatologist. That night when I was drying him off after his bath, I noticed that it moved when touched. I wiggled and jiggled it for a bit, and then out popped a pebble.
Another example. My baby has a lip tie. BH it isn't affecting her weight gain, but it does make nursing uncomfortable, and she has so far refused a bottle or pacifier because it's hard for her to get a good latch. I know this because I see her getting frustrated when she can't get it.when I brought it up to the ped, he said it's unrelated and generally lip ties are left alone unless very severe. One of my older children also has it, and now has a huge gap between the two front teeth.
Pediatricians, like all humans, do not know everything, and are fallible.
Doing research does not only mean reading blogs and Dr. Google. Some of us are slightly more intelligent than that.

amother

Bronze

Wed, Aug 17 2016, 7:29 pm

I'm a pediatric NP. A lot of what we do during the well visits has less to do with malpractice than with insurance coverage. There are certain mandates, that when a patient comes for a visit we must discuss XYZ. And I have to check off on a form that I discussed it. If we are audited and it turns out that we are not doing/saying/asking something that the insurance company demands, they won't pay for the visit. For example, any patient with a BMI above 85 we must give nutrition counseling. Not getting into whether BMI is a good measure of obesity or whether every child who is overweight necessarily has something wrong.

I am not only a PNP, I am also a mother of many children with many years of experience. Still, I'm not a big yenta so when it comes to ladies shmoozing circles I don't venture my opinion unless I'm asked. It seems that the louder mouthed yenta mothers (who may have 1-2 children at most) have the most opinions.

Nobody is obligated to take my opinion. I will not send CPS to your house to check if there's whole milk or 2% in your fridge. But I do take my position seriously and try not to give opinions out of my rear. I am always reading, doing research and asking advice from more experienced physicians (and parents).

seeker

Wed, Aug 17 2016, 9:50 pm

I believe in a balance. I don't agree with everything my pediatrician says but I do feel that he respects me as the mom and will engage in 2-way conversations that mean a lot more to me than just having an approach that I agree with (on my lack of medical training.) So he'll go by the book on whole milk while I share with him my research on the benefits of whole milk and as long as my kids are healthy he'll respect that but continue recommending by the book to his other patients. When I had concerns about the recommended vaccination schedule, he continued to recommend the schedule but at the same time helped me figure out the best way to do an alternate schedule and left the final decisions to me (he would likely have been less accommodating if I were looking to avoid vaccines altogether, but I was more interested in selective/spread out).

I've thought about switching to someone more up to date on alternative viewpoints or a little more out of the box, but the reason I with my doc is that respect and caring, plus he is just a very skilled physician. He knows what he's doing in that his diagnoses, treatments, and referrals have generally been spot on. My kids have been through a bunch and it seems to be that he has excellent judgment and he's always come through for us when we needed. That's why we stick with him even if we don't see eye to eye on some things.

Hashem_Yaazor

Thu, Aug 18 2016, 12:10 am

For everyone who says "just switch doctors" is it that easy, really? I had a great pediatrician for 10 years, then we moved (and he retired). I tried getting the same level of personal care and attention and could not find it one bit. I'm on my third doctor in my new location, and happy to stay with the practice, but we have 3 days of well visits in a row, and though I've only seen the main ped till now, these 3 days we're seeing him for only one of my kids (and 2-3 others for the other 3!) So it is really hard to build a trusting relationship with big practices. Never mind insurance woes to limit who you can see to begin with to even try if you like them.

I'm reasonably happy with my practice now. They're definitely a lot more level headed and humbled enough (most of them) to have discussions with the parents. I had an issue with their ignorant LC (it's hard when you know more than they do, and that's not bragging, it's just a fact that she barely has credentials, and I have nursed 7 kids with lots of background research and an IBCLC in the family -- so mock google educated parents all you want, I ended up being right, and she was flat out wrong). I take everything with a grain of salt if it sounds off to me on something I know enough about that I can see it needs further research, but I'm happy to defer for things beyond my general knowledge.

To know how badly I am trying to make it work with this practice, I am using one 35 solid minutes away with tight parking. That means I'm spending an hour and 10 minutes of travel time just to see the doctor, never mind the visit duration. Not everyone can make that sacrifice to "just switch".

seeker

Thu, Aug 18 2016, 1:58 am

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

YES.

I also end up spending about that much travel time. As the crow flies I'm very close to my doctor's office which is one of the reasons I started there, but this is NYC and traffic can be tricky at times and parking is ALWAYS tricky.
Plus, it seems the rest of the world "discovered" this doctor after we did and suddenly it went from normal to always a really long wait in the office. But I mean really REALLY long.
But it's a group practice so if it's a sick visit and I really can't or don't want to wait I can see someone else who may or may not have a wait, and while I don't love them all equally some of the associates are also great.
But switching is not so simple. I keep thinking about it because there are places closer to home that people in my community are happy with, and the long wait times are a real killer sometimes, well most of the time actually. But this particular doctor, besides that I've already built up trust with him, he's been seeing my kids for all their well visits, all their bigger issues, and a number of their sick visits since they were babies. It's not just a matter of friendship; he is seeing something different than a stranger would when he refers back to her history or charts. A new doctor might not even know what to look for, or if he did look at it he wouldn't know the full story just from the notes. OUR doctor knows exactly what her breathing looked like that time she had the allergic whatever. He knows why he chose to treat this infection and not that infection which might affect what to do if it happens again. If an issue comes up with child B he may remember that something similar once happened with child A in the same family two years ago, when even I might not make the connection. Of course he sees a zillion people at a ridiculous pace because that's healthcare these days so he doesn't know everyone's history by heart but it's not at all the same as starting fresh with someone new. When your kid needs the best care now, you don't want to go through the unease of having just started with a new doctor and not being sure yet how much you "get" each other.

Basically my doctor's office is great in some ways but a MAJOR pain the neck in other ways that translate into each visit killing most of a day, but I'm not switching until we move out of the city.