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This is the kind of guy who gives doctors a bad name
Posted By katie allison granju
There is an interesting, ongoing discussion going on over at Instapundit about parents who decline to vaccinate their kids. Glenn Reynolds has included some e-mails he’s gotten from readers - a few of them doctors - as part of the dialogue. This is what one of them - a Dr. William Schmidt - had to say:
I don’t know anyone in the medical profession personally who disbelieves in vaccinations (unlike claims made on certain websites). And, in response to Michelle Malkin, many pediatricians don’t have time to waste in their very busy day discussing the “risks” of vaccinating one’s children. From personal experience, many parents, especially in the Google age, have just enough knowledge to turn this into a 5-10′ conversation and will often continue to disagree with you afterwards. Ten minutes may not seem like much to the soccer mom who thinks that noted autism researcher Robert Kennedy is infallible, but it is to the pediatrician who would rather spend that time doing something more useful (like seeing another patient).
My first thought on reading this was, what an arrogant jerk. My second thought was, what a careless, thoughtless pediatrician. And my third thought was, Dude, you seem to have forgotten that when I bring my kid to see you…I AM PAYING YOU.
Dr. Schmidt’s tone is the one that gives doctors a bad name - the one commonly known as a God complex. It’s all about him and his time and his busy day and his desire to cram as many patients as possible into that busy day.
(Note to Dr. Schmidt: If you don’t have ten more minutes to talk to a parent with questions, then you are overbooking. )
And guess what Dr. Schmidt? Not all parents with questions about vaccinations are “twee Bobos” (as Megan McArdle christened us). This guy clearly has a fundamental disrespect for the parents he sees, automatically assuming that all their questions about this issue are stupid, unnecessary and time-wasting. This is where the bad doctoring comes in.
Good doctors want to talk to their patients’ parents in order to make sure the doctor has all the info needed before vaccinating a baby or child. They want to ask plenty of good questions before vaccinating so they don’t miss something that might alter the vaccination schedule for that particular child.In the case of my own children:
Child #1 is fully vaccinated
Child #2 had a very bad reaction to her first pertussis vaccine, and her pediatrician suggested we give her a modified version of her vaccination schedule based on that reaction
Child #3 is fully vaccinated, but we waited to start the vaccines until he was a bit further on in infancy due to some health issues he had at birth
Child #4 is fully vaccinated so far at age 7 months
Before my pediatrician gave any of my kids a single shot, he wanted to talk over each kid’s health history with me, as well as hear a bit about my own family’s health history. My father and I, for example, each had a very bad reaction to tetanus vaccinations. He wanted to know about that. He wanted to hear what questions I had. And he never rushed me, because he knows this is a very important topic.
Not all vaccine questions are from parents who don’t “believe in vaccinations.” There is a middle ground here, and this doctor seems to have staked out a claim so far to one side that he’s as “out there” as the parents who refuse to even consider vaccinating at all.
Injecting a vaccine into a 15 pound human is serious business. It may be good medicine for most babies, and for a healthy population, but it’s serious enough business that the pediatrician overseeing it needs to look at that 15 pound human as an individual, with an individual health history, and not just as a tiny human pincushion whose parents aren’t allowed to ask any questions.
And as the number of “required” (or soon-to-be required) vaccinations for children grows every year (HPV? Chicken Pox?), the argument that childhood vaccination is a cut and dried issue becomes weaker. Yes, population-wide polio vaccination is undoubtedly a good idea. But rotavirus? The slope gets slipperier (is that a word?) with every vaccine added to the mix.
And Dr. Schmidt, you are likely correct that you “don’t know anyone in the medical profession personally who disbelieves in vaccinations.” That’s a very bizarre way to characterize the many, many reputable physicians who are willing to ask critical questions about how vaccines and vaccination schedules might be modified or improved for the better health of individual patients and the population as a whole. Those doctors aren’t saying they “disbelieve in vaccinations.” They are saying that just because the pharmaceutical companies come out with yet another vaccine next year, it doesn’t mean we need to add it to the mix without taking a good, hard look at it. It may not be right for every child in every situation. It may even turn out to have serious problems AFTER you’ve already injected it into a bunch of your patients during your 10 minute “consults.”
Last, Dr. Schmidt, I hope you aren’t practicing medicine on the basis of what you think you know about the medical views of doctors you know “personally.” That’s not really how it’s supposed to be done.
Sheesh.
Mar 25th, 2008
Give me a break. Your physician isn’t your personal consultant about all things medical. It really is wasting his time explaining to numskulls like you over and over and over again why you’re being so stupid with the pretense of being open-minded. God gave you a brain; use it.
Hah! On the contrary Joe, my physician *is* my personal medical consultant. That’s his job! His whole reason for being in his career is so that he can serve people’s medical needs. Perhaps you’re happier being a herd animal, where the farmer (doctor) comes through, pokes and prods you, listens to your lungs, then injects you with something and puts you on your way. I, however, prefer to exercise the brain that God gave me, and ask questions. If my doctor doesn’t want to answer my questions, then I’ll find a new doctor. Whether I have the same questions as everyone else is immaterial.
Dear Ms. Granju: First it is likely that you are on an insurance plan, so you are only paying a fraction—a small fraction—of your doctor’s time. Next, the overbooking you speak of is an attempt to keep waiting times down. Or perhaps you haven’t had to wait a month for, say, a physical exam. Next, you are quite right that Dr. Schmidt’s style is irritating. Perhaps he is cranky from having to deal with one too many patients like Dave, who mistake the chips growing out of their shoulders for stars, concluding that they are generals giving orders to everyone while they exercise the brains God gave them as part of their postlapsarian state. I’m a bit puzzled at your objections to his conducting medicine in part on the views of physicians he knows. Scientific? Perhaps not to the highest degree? Care to tell us how many doctors views you know of? Is that number big enough to constitute a scientific sample?
You are right to say that vaccination is great in the mass, but individuals may have trouble. But you don’t specify what vaccines trouble you beyond mentioning rotavirus. How about diptheria vaccines? Are they troublesome? Without specifying what vaccinations trouble you, it’s tempting to say that you object to all vaccinations except polio. I must say this seems rash to me, using the brain the devil gave me. Perhaps you could expand on your complaint. More likely not.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
Is your pediatrician accepting new patients?
Mr. Koster: My insurance is major medical only, which has made me much more aware of what I’m getting for my dollars, even though when I had a PPO it cost more per month for the premuim than what a bill for a well-child visit costs me now.