Re: Cardiologist too conservative?

Jason Earl explained on 5/29/2008 :
>>> I think the guy was right.  If something wrong happened to you, he
>>> would be responsible.  You had your pneumosomething already.  What if
>>> it happened again?  You could sue his pants off, I suppose.
>>>  
>>  
>> He's not a guarantor of my health; he just has to act prudently. I had
>> already signed a pretty comprehensive informed consent do***ent, and
>> his warning me of any additional risk, with my knowing acceptance of
>> it would seemingly negate any malpractice. Seems that if I'm telling
>> him I'm regularly exceeding those maximums and he fails to test me
>> under those conditions when he had the op****tunity to do so under
>> medical supervisiocould expose him to liability more than actually
>> testing me with informed consent.

> How old is your doctor?  Maybe the real answer is that your doctor
> didn't want to see you beat his own time on the stress test so badly :).

> What's more likely, though, is that your doctor just doesn't care.

Yeah, that's it, he's a cold hearted, cruel bastard who wants patients 
to drop to his floor, dead. Yeah, that's it.

> Somewhere along the lines he lowered his goals from keeping people
> active and healthy to merely keeping people alive.

Maybe he did; maybe he did so because keeping people active (which is 
not in his power in the least) and healthy (which requires patient 
cooperation, often not forthcoming) v.s, keeping them alive (which 
gives tem the chance to change and for him to be of service) was the 
only choice he had.

> I suppose that's probably a pragmatic position for a cardiologist to
> take, but it certainly doesn't sound very *fun*.  If you are going to
> take a stress test, you might as well see how well the ticker holds up
> when you open things up all of the way.

> Jason

Kill the patient, cure the patient?