Misinformation vs. medicine: A personal example

Every physician likely has anecdotes about a patient mistakenly believing something wrong about medicine or health care. Here, Physicians Foundation President Gary Price, MD, MBA, shares a personal recollection from his career.

Medical Economics: Is there an example you remember from your own career that would illustrate why medical misinformation and disinformation can become so frustrating for a doctor attempting to care for a patient?

Gary Price, MD, MBA: Well, I think if you ask any physician, they could give you a hundred anecdotes. But the one that I found most personally disturbing, occurred during the COVID epidemic, and I had a patient who needed an operation. It wasn't an emergency, it was elective. It was a long-standing patient of mine, who I knew very well and had a very good relationship, one that I thought involved mutual trust between the two was something that's critical to any physician patient relationship. And we got to the part about my secretary scheduling a COVID test for him pre-operatively. This was a point in the COVID epidemic when we had reliable tests, and we knew that a patient with undiagnosed COVID under anesthesia was actually a threat, not just to himself — we could make a respiratory infection with COVID much worse by doing an operation — but also to all the caregivers around them, the anesthesiologist, the nurse, myself. In scheduling surgery, we were planning on being very close to this patient for an hour or two, and we tried very hard to avoid unnecessary exposure of our health care team to these patients by getting a COVID test. This patient got visibly agitated, was yelling and screaming at my office staff to the point where I think they were definitely intimidated in some of them, I think, were probably afraid. And when I intervened, I got dressed down with the fact that not only was COVID not dangerous to anyone, but the test was dangerous, a stream of misinformation from a very intelligent patient that I had a long relationship with. He ended up storming out of the office, didn't even give me a chance to explain why. But that's something I won't forget for a long time.

Medical Economics: I certainly hope that patient one way or other was able to come to a positive outcome if he needed treatment.

Gary Price, MD, MBA: I share your hope but I have no idea.