http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/02/dr-crippen-bogus-whiplash-industry#start-of-comments
In Whiplash and Other Useful Illnesses, Andrew Malleson, a Canadian psychiatrist, shows how an occult conspiracy between doctors, poor medical science and vulnerable patients has generated a bogus "whiplash" industry. Family doctors in the UK usually find that patients who have no objective signs of physical injury, but still present with persistent symptoms that they relate to "whiplash", often have more subtle and possibly psychological problems. They may even be on the slipperly slope to "fibromyalgia" whatever that is. There is any amount of bad medical science upon which both doctors and patients rely.
Malleson argues it is the doctors who are to blame. When we should be saying to people, "Well, yes, I am sure you have been a bit shaken up by the accident," our computers encourage us to enter "whiplash" on the patient's summary. We need to stop doing that. We need to reserve the diagnosis "whiplash injury" for patients who have grade 4 and grade 5 problems.
Above all, we need to protect vulnerable people from alternative quacktitioners who make a living out of conditions such as "chronic whiplash" and "fibromyalgia", and will keep rubbing a patient until his wallet is empty.
We need to post comments.
Jenny
In Whiplash and Other Useful Illnesses, Andrew Malleson, a Canadian psychiatrist, shows how an occult conspiracy between doctors, poor medical science and vulnerable patients has generated a bogus "whiplash" industry. Family doctors in the UK usually find that patients who have no objective signs of physical injury, but still present with persistent symptoms that they relate to "whiplash", often have more subtle and possibly psychological problems. They may even be on the slipperly slope to "fibromyalgia" whatever that is. There is any amount of bad medical science upon which both doctors and patients rely.
Malleson argues it is the doctors who are to blame. When we should be saying to people, "Well, yes, I am sure you have been a bit shaken up by the accident," our computers encourage us to enter "whiplash" on the patient's summary. We need to stop doing that. We need to reserve the diagnosis "whiplash injury" for patients who have grade 4 and grade 5 problems.
Above all, we need to protect vulnerable people from alternative quacktitioners who make a living out of conditions such as "chronic whiplash" and "fibromyalgia", and will keep rubbing a patient until his wallet is empty.
We need to post comments.
Jenny