[Bartweiss]

There are a whole range of issues where PCPs tend to be very poor support. In particular, disorders which are not life threatening, have no clearcut sign or single 'cure', and don't have an obvious class of specialists to handle them. As someone else said here, PCPs are 'switchboard operators' - but these issues are rare requests with no obvious person to forward you to. It's not especially their fault, this is how triage works, but it means "go ask your doctor" has an unusually low success rate.

Joint and chronic pain definitely count, as do lots of intestinal issues, unclear-cause headaches, and so on. Maybe you need a surgeon, or else a physical therapist; maybe a nutritionist, or else an allergist; maybe a neurologist, or else a psychiatrist. These sorts of problems seem to require a willingness to try many things, talk to a bunch of different people, and potentially push back on a doctor who's only recommending one path.