The doctor you can't trust!
Today we have a difficult topic: public criticism of colleagues. But I have to admit that there is one colleague who is so annoying that I have to say something about it today.
The villain is our colleague Dr Google. In our practice, there is a massive increase in the number of young people, for example, who are incredibly insecure because they have received a diagnosis via Google that scares them, even panics them. Fathers and mothers are often completely distraught because they have great fears for their children.
In many cases, it would probably have been easy to avoid such anxiety and panic by asking two or three specific questions to an experienced doctor.
The problem is that Dr Google is very, very bad at differentiating. For example, between old and young. If your three-year-old child has blood on the toilet paper, that's a completely different matter than if it happens to an 88-year-old. Because with an older person this can be a real problem, you also have to rule out many potential illnesses. With a child, on the other hand, 99 per cent of the time it is completely harmless.
And the other great piece of wisdom that you learn over the years as a doctor is that common things are common and rare things are rare. This guiding principle from medicine means nothing other than that when making a diagnosis, you should first think of the most likely disease as the cause. And not some rare and often dramatic case.
And that's why my message today is: Have the confidence to ask your doctor. There are no stupid questions when it comes to health. You can call us at any time, send us emails, send us messages via Facebook, etc. Please do this before you try to make diagnoses via a machine.
Talk to us - you will save yourself and your children a lot of negative thoughts and panic.
Further interesting tips
"Democracy needs education"
A "must-read" for anyone who has to deal with children - especially in their early years: "Democracy needs education. Why resistance to authoritarian tendencies begins in childhood". A book by paediatrician Herbert Renz-Polster and Ulrich Renz - where the title already says a lot ..
Growing pains
Are you interested in winning a Nobel Prize for Medicine? Then we have a tip for you: try to find out why growing hurts even though it doesn't hurt. Sounds mysterious? It is a bit.
Meningococcus I
Infections with meningococci (bacteria that can cause dangerous meningitis, for example) are fortunately very rare and fortunately we can also do a lot to prevent them with vaccinations (more on this in Part II).