[nradov]

What standard of care are you proposing? Please be specific.

Auto mechanics frequently misdiagnose problems, especially those caused by electrical or software faults. But in the worst case they can usually just keep following the manufacturer's service manual and replacing parts in a trial-and-error process until the vehicle works again.

The human body is orders of magnitude more complex and there is no service manual. We have a few evidence-based medicine clinical practice guidelines but those cover only the simplest of cases. For anything more complex, physicians have to fall back on theory, intuition, and experience. It's not surprising that they sometimes get it wrong. And sometimes there's just no way to make a definitive diagnosis for the root cause of a patient's complaints and so treatment is necessarily symptomatic; this can be tough for patients to accept. I'm not trying to defend clinicians who make preventable errors or dismiss legitimate patient concerns but we need to be realistic about what is achievable given the current limited state of medical knowledge.

[ok_dad]

The standard here was the doctor didn’t listen to the woman. He could easily have found she was lying or not with a simple overnight visit to the hospital. Put her in there for one night, see she’s not drinking but still drunk, and that’s it. Instead, she suffered for ages.

Listening is a simple standard. Doctors don’t listen because they don’t care further than getting more patients through the door faster.

If I tell my mechanic there is a problem with the steering, he’s not going to change the oil and send my car out, he’ll check the fucking steering.

[s1artibartfast]

Did the woman come in and say "I have auto-brewery syndrome, and I want you to test me for it"?

If so, then the comparison is off. It isnt that the doctors "didn't listen", it is that they didn't correctly deduce a 1 in a million cause, based on the information they had.

[ok_dad]

She came in, the doctor asked if she had drunk alcohol, she says no, what more is there to understand? This doctor didn’t listen. If he had, even if he didn’t know about this specific disease, he could have started tests and brought in other doctors. Instead, suffering. Not hard to understand. Doctors don’t listen.

[s1artibartfast]

You keep saying they don't listen, but there's no evidence they didn't hear what she said. It seems your problem is more with how much weight they put on that information, and how much effort they put into getting to the bottom of things.

Most doctors aren't interested in playing Detective for the extremely rare cause. They treat the most likely cause given the information that they have on hand

[ok_dad]

So you’re admitting they don’t listen, they just try whatever’s most common.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you are hung up on the word listen, and I am saying there are a lot of things that happen after they hear what a patient says.

patients aren't saying "I have auto brewery and would like you to confirm it".

Patients are instead reporting symptoms which the doctor then has to interpret and find a likely cause. Even if they 100% believe the patients, the diagnosis may not be obvious. IF they dont 100% trust the patient, or think they may be confused, then it is even harder. Patients ARE very unreliable.