On the flip side, if you are better informed you can communicate better with your doctors and possibly get a better outcome. I have a great Mayo doctor team but there are many different specialties which they also don’t know about or have no medical training to handle. I was prescribed gabapentin for my symptoms of neuropathy which were only numbness. After telling my primary care doctor it’s not helping she consulted with her team and and was told the drug does nothing for numbness. Then when diagnosed by a neurologist the next month with idiopathic small fiber neuropathy I got the same from him - nothing available to fix the numbness. Just my humble opinion 🙂

I do agree that a person needs to have confidence in the medical professionals they see. However, not all medical professionals are trained the same way. Their education, residence, fellowship varies for most specialists/physicians. I have had great doctors and I have had doctors that misdiagnosed, mistreated, and appeared to work outside of their scope of expertise. I appreciate the comments on this website as sometimes we need to advocate for ourselves or process with others to aid in making medical decisions. Getting second opinions is a good thing. To give one example of several specialists who misdiagnosed me and could not come up with why I had multiple symptoms that were effecting me, I kept getting referred from one provider to another when the whole time, the issue was a med issue. I found this out with the help of others who were also frustrated with feeling like they were not getting any answers. I do agree that a person needa to find a medical provider that they have confidence in, rather than just being frustrated with seeing a medical professional who is not treating the medical issue with success.

@jmweissier I tend to agree with you, most of the time. Unfortunately, there are some doctors who do not stay very well informed, and who may venture into areas beyond their ken rather than refer a patient to a specialist. If a doctor resents research I have done I tend to be very wary of them - obviously they are not very confident of their own abilities to know what they are talking about.
Right now I am pretty confident of almost all of my doctors, except for my PCP, but I do still research so I can understand what they are saying and possibly contribute to it, as with which pharmaceutical I might take for a problem. Right now I am trying to decide on what I will take for my osteoporosis. The endo recommends Reclast and my PCP also thinks that's a good option. The dilemma of what pharmaceutical to take for osteoporosis is the most difficult one I have known. Difficult and frightening.
JK