Scrutable

Interesting article in The Guardian, with some comments from Julie Leask, about anti-vaxxers she's interviewed.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... nformation

She was surprised, while researching attitudes towards vaccination, by how many parents had been frightened by a bad health care experience. An uncaring doctor or a cold, unforgiving health system.

Yes, I recall similar research on people who preferred alternative medicine. They often took it up after bad experiences with with medicine medicine. In addition to what you mention, I think that another motivator was feeling that their symptoms were being dismissed or belittled by the medical profession.

Yes. I remember reading this by someone I follow on twitter https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/opin ... tand-them/

I honestly didn’t set out to be a difficult patient, but I soon learned that some doctors and nurses (or at least my doctors and nurses) have a low tolerance for inquisitive pregnant women.

But every time I voiced my vaccine concerns to doctors or nurses, they would condescend to me, treating me like a child who doesn’t know what’s good for her—a tactic that, in my experience, doesn’t do much to increase a patient’s confidence.

In the end, I did choose to vaccinate my son. I did my due diligence, searching out unbiased information on vaccines and vaccine injury, and had many long conversations with my husband and my sister (the scientist in the family). Through my own efforts, I learned more about vaccinations than I ever had from a healthcare worker.

Knowing what I know now, I believe the choice not to vaccinate is deeply selfish and anti-science—but I also understand why some people make that call, because I was very nearly one of them. I don’t think any amount of yelling or name-calling is going to dissuade them from their fear. That’s not how fear works. In order to address the reasons why many mothers are afraid of vaccinating their kids, we need to address much larger issues: How women are cared for, spoken to and heard by medical professionals—way before they even have children.

My first thought is that discovering someone who's anti-X had a previous bad X experience shouldn't really come as a big surprise.

<ETA> I suppose the surprise might be how many people generally had a previous bad X experience.

A colleague's parents both were nurses, and they met on a paediatric ward where his dad was involved in a trial to see how training doctors to improve their bedside manner worked with children.

Probably unsurprisingly, those doctors who weren't impatient with their patients actually had faster recovery times for their patients.

His dad spent a lot of the rest of his career in rolling out this training - against some pushback by senior doctors.

Couple of general points...

Perception of "uncaring professionals" - some of this depends how the professionals are spoken to in the first place. I have, personally and professionally, encountered folk who cannot or will not give a straight forward intelligible account of what is going on, which can lead to a degree of frustration and terseness. A poor account can lead to feeling "dismissed", 'cos obviously things have not been heard.
The old problem of amount of time available for appointments - I was very lucky in having longer periods available.
Having heard b.llsh.t questions over and over again - Woo Fatigue, if you will.
"I've done my 'research' with Dr Google, who knows better than you!" 'Nuff said!

Some "professionals" are just shite at the talking to folk stuff. Some of this comes down, in the experience of this household certainly, to plain sexism. See also racism. Both of these can also cut the other way.

It is often hard for a professional to judge what level they should pitch a discussion - if I wanted to I could be very unhappy with a load of folk in Northumberland cardiology, because they pretty much all started talking to me as if I did not know much. How, initially at least, was it possible for them to know what I did know?

Accents and dialects can be a bit of a barrier - Easington NHS bods hired a bunch of Dutch GPs, then found they had to supply them with a glossary of Pitmatic so they could understand the locals.

TL; DR Communication can be a complex process in which all play their part.

In the US, there's a whole host of extra issues as well.

Quacks are relatively cheap, and almost as importantly, usually have much clearer up-front advertised costs, rather than surprise large bills that arrive 2 months after you were treated.

The bad experience here is structural as well as personal.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 19, 2020 5:17 pm

In the US, there's a whole host of extra issues as well.

Quacks are relatively cheap, and almost as importantly, usually have much clearer up-front advertised costs, rather than surprise large bills that arrive 2 months after you were treated.

The bad experience here is structural as well as personal.

Agreed. The poor experience of conventional medicine is not confined to the insurance based model. There is a strand of bureaucracy within the NHS that still believes that if you are getting it for free (You're not, but that's another discussion.) then you have no right to complain about anything and anyway we know better. These people are not primarily the people who treat you but functionaries designing and managing the systems: We have all met the functionally abusive doctor's receptionist.

In all of my 60 odd years I have only met one nurse and one doctor who should not have been working with people or any living thing for that matter. Most just require a little time and space to be able to show the kindness in their care that they are naturally disposed to do offer. But that one doctor could have been enough to put my wife off doctors and the health service for life.