Health care workers can’t do much to help people if they don’t know the answer, but some of them are struggling to cope.
The ABC’s ABC Today program has uncovered some of the stories that have caught our attention.
Dr Ian Bowerman has a case of the ‘I’m not qualified to prescribe’ syndrome.
“My doctor has given me an X-ray of my kidneys,” he said.
“I’m sure there’s some sort of virus, but it’s not clear.”
Dr Bowermans kidneys have not recovered.
“I’m a pretty smart person, so I knew I could do it myself,” he explained.
“So, when they called me to ask if I was qualified to take the x-ray, I told them I was.
But they just laughed and said, ‘Well, we don’t do x-rays’.” Dr Bowers kidneys have recovered, but not all of his doctors do.
Dr Steve Waddell has a problem with a patient’s weight.
“[They] came in and they were sitting on the chair, they’re underweight,” Dr Waddells chief of cardiology said.
He said it was not clear if this patient was a doctor or not, but he said that they needed to check the patient’s records.
The ABC’s Today programme has revealed a case where an elderly woman had a stroke.
It was a difficult time for her.
Her doctor told her she could not take a drug to try to help her, because the drugs are not approved for elderly people.
She was prescribed a drug that was approved for her age group.
In this case, her doctor said, she could try it, but she had to wait.
After that, she did not know what to do with herself.
A doctor told Dr Watt she should get her own specialist, and she could take that, or the medication she was given.
But the drugs were not approved, and Dr Wath’s doctor said she should not have taken them.
That’s when she started looking at a range of different drugs.
At the end of this period, she discovered that the drug was approved, but that her doctor had prescribed it for her, even though it was approved by the FDA.
While her doctor was not approved by her doctors, her doctors did have to get a drug approved by them, and they had to have the patient sign a statement saying they would not take the drug, because it was dangerous.
This is what happened to Ms Watt.
When she did that, her symptoms improved, and her doctor recommended her the drug.
Now, she does not need the drug at all, and has regained a lot of her health.
Another example is Dr James Brown, a specialist in general surgery, who has been on dialysis for over two decades.
His patient, a woman, had been on the organ transplant programme for two years, but her kidneys were failing.
Then her doctor told him she was at risk of cancer, and that she should have her kidneys removed.
On the advice of her specialist, Dr Brown did what anyone would do: he went to a specialist.
As a result, her kidneys have improved and she has regained the weight she was missing, but the cancer still remains.
More stories from the ABC’s Health section:
