Dear People: Yes, You Can Get A New Doctor

This is our follow-up post to Dear People: Signs You Need a New Doctor.

Dear People,

YES! You CAN get a new doctor.

What’s your first, gut response to hearing that maybe it’s time for a different doctor? Are you protesting in your mind? Even just a little? Probably.

It’s important to listen to that protest and consider it, but if you read through our last blog post and thought “oh wow, my doctor makes stuff up all the time and never listens to me – maybe I DO need a new doctor,” let’s try to overcome some of those protests.

But there aren’t any other doctors

Yes, there are.*

Do you mean “there aren’t any other doctors in my city/area”? You can drive. Be realistic with how often you need to see this doctor in person, take into account any travel allowances offered by insurance/charities/others, and don’t be afraid to seek out doctors further away. We see some specialists that are a 10 hour drive away, and I know lots of families whose children see doctors they have to fly to. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Well, if you strongly want to try Treatment Protocol A and your local doctor will only do Treatment Protocol B, then yeah, it’s probably worth it. If your local doctor hasn’t ever treated someone with X before, and you have X, it’s probably worth it. If your local doctor keeps shrugging and nothing they’ve tried or suggested has helped, then it’s probably worth it.

(Yes, I know this can get expensive, and I know it’s unrealistic for some families. But do seek out what resources are available to you to help with this. Insurance, disease-specific charities, charities that help with travel expenses, Ronald McDonald Houses, etc.)

*There are some cases where there really isn’t another doctor. But if you’re already seeing the nation’s or world’s top expert in your issue, chances are good you don’t need to see another doctor.

But I need to stay with our local doctors because we’ll see them in the ER

Yes, you might see the old doctors in the ER. Though, depending on why you’re switching doctors, you might want to avoid the ER they’re associated with if at all possible. Be honest with your child’s new doctor. We switched to you from our old provider because x, y, and z. If we need to go to the emergency room, what should we do?

Most of our (not local hospital) doctors prefer that we give them a heads-up before heading in unless it’s a true life or death situation, and they’ll advise us on next steps, including advice on what to not let the local doctors do. (With his kidney transplant, we have to be careful with meds, and the local guys aren’t always on top of it. I usually get advice like “they might want to do x, that’s not ok. Definitely have them call first” or “just have them call once things have settled down, we’re ok with however they want to treat this.”

We’ve literally never had local doctors other than the pediatrician, but our ER has always just called the relevant specialists at our primary (2 hours away) hospital and done whatever they’re instructed. I guess they don’t have to, but I wouldn’t go to an ER that wouldn’t call my child’s current specialists. (And yes, if I lived in a town with only one emergency room, and that emergency room wouldn’t follow the recommendations of my child’s specialists in another town, I’d move. Easier said than done, I know, but this is my kid’s life we’re talking about.)

It’s too much work

Yes, it is a lot of work. Frankly, this is what kept me in a dissatisfying relationship with my primary care doctor for years. I felt increasingly crappy during those years, my ferritin fell lower and lower, and yet my complaints fell on deaf ears. You’re getting older. You have three kids. You are busy. Blah Blah. I never felt listened to.

I finally sought out a new provider last year, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long. Don’t be me. Don’t wait so long!

It’s Too Awkward!

Yeah. It’s awkward. Most of the time, you can switch doctors and never see the old one again, and that’s that. Some of the time, you’ll still run into your old doctor. Or, in our case, sometimes we have a more gradual switchover, where we see another doctor for a second opinion, but still have his care actually provided by the old doctor. We had this recently, where we felt like our local doctor was just out of her depth with a situation we have going on, so we saw a specialist at a much bigger hospital. That specialist has been a little frustrating, but wanted to do tests and have us see another doctor at their hospital, and so actually getting the second opinion has taken a while. In the meantime, we had another appointment with our local doctor, who we hadn’t really planned to tell we were seeing someone else. But she knew. And that was a really awkward conversation. But we got through it, and ultimately, I needed to just turn off the part of myself that is really socially awkward, and turn up the part that says “my kid deserves the best care possible and I deserve to find out if another doctor can provide that.”

Don’t let the fear of awkwardness hurt you or your kid.

Are any of these (or other) reasons worth risking harm?

That’s really what it comes down to. “Is this a good enough reason to risk harm to my or my kid’s health?”

I’m not advocating abandoning your doctors. I’m advocating abandoning doctors who aren’t meeting your needs, especially if you have chronic or serious health conditions.

You deserve a doctor who listens, who considers your opinions, who educates you, who engages in conversation, who doesn’t lie, who doesn’t bully, and who treats you as a valuable part of the team. If you do not have that, then you deserve a new doctor!