I really believe that doctors arrogance is a killer.
A long time ago (back when I was nursing) I came to the view that no one should be allowed into a university to study either nursing or medicine until they had spent at least two years working as a care assistant or a hosptial visitor volunteer.
It's not even just a refusal to do basic tests - I've come across friends and family where the tests were done; blood tests or x-ray and the doctor didn't understand them. My neighbour was sent home from A&E after her x-ray showed nothing and was left in serious pain for ten days before a consultant phoned her and asked to her go in because there was a fracture on the same x-ray the first doc said was clear!
The other thing doctors do, which is so unethical, is tell patients test results were fine or "inconclusive" when in fact those tests have gone missing. This has happened to me twice. It also happened to a friend of mine whose husband is now dead because his first scan went walkies so they told him he was fine. He had a brain tumor. By the time he got a second scan it was way too late. They had been married a year.
Yes, I have been met with puzzlement by receptionists when asking for my test results, and been asked "Don't you want the doctor to interpret them?" When I was put through to the GP on that occasion, he rattled off a string of figures, upon which I asked him what units the various results were in. His reply was that it didn't say, but he guessed that it was mmol/l. I eventually got a copy of the results, and the units were all there next to the figures!
On another occasion, after a senior GP told me that all my results were normal, I pressed him for more info on one, as I had specifically asked for it to be done, and was surprised to hear that it was normal (I think it was urine sodium). He then admitted that he didn't actually know whether it was normal or not, and proceeded to
Google it, apparently settling on the first hit he saw, saying "I expect this is what you do", as he knew I did freelance research. So he was apparently unaware that there are accredited and official medical sites where such things can be looked up.
When I had been taken to hospital with severe hyponatraemia, the A&E doctor said that my recent blood sodium results had been normal, and sent me home. I knew that they had not been normal, and I had to be rushed back to hospital in a near-life-threatening state again the same day.
After the hospital stay, when I asked how they had come to the conclusion that I was overhydrated (I was in fact dehydrated) they referred to three test results which were all either unreliable indicators or had been misinterpreted.
I gave up with them.