Interesting Article On Somatizing Patients

[PhoenixDown]

Medically Unexplained Symptoms on Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lbn9y

It was a poor discussion which didn't go into failing to extensively test, implies the problem becomes chronic because a label was given. Assumes psychosocial explanations, and buys in to the fallacy that MUPS/MUS are psychological by default.

 

[PhoenixDown]

http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/5/519.full

Results.A total of 284 completed questionnaires were returned (22 returned uncompleted), giving an adjusted response rate of 75%. Although it was broadly felt that patients with MUS are difficult to manage, most GPs felt that patients with MUS should be managed in primary care. Providing reassurance, counselling and acting as a ‘gatekeeper' to prevent inappropriate investigations were considered important roles for GP management. A majority felt that patients with MUS have personality problems or psychiatric illness. Fewer than half of the respondents felt that there are effective treatments available for somatization.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23369375

'They've just got symptoms without science': Medical trainees' acquisition of negative attitudes towards patients with medically unexplained symptoms.

Current medical training fails to equip doctors to engage with MUS and potentially fosters the development of unhelpful views of these patients. Informed teaching on diagnosis and management of MUS is necessary at a trainee level to limit the development of negative attitudes.

 

[Esther12]

The more I read about it, the more I think that reassurance is a dangerous intervention, particularly when given without informed consent. People should be spoken to honestly and uncertainty explored, even when doing so is not at all reassuring.

 

[Sean]

It is astounding that doctors still can't just simply say, 'Sorry, we don't know what the problem is, our current knowledge ends here'.

I don't care if they don't know about everything, expert technical knowledge always has it limits, and there are plenty of those limits in medicine.

But I do care if they pretend they do know and bullshit me, and then try to blame their failure on me because I don't go along with their destructive dishonest nonsense.

They get no respect or politeness from me on that.