In my experience most doctors are pretty useless trying to solve a difficult problem. I had my daughter's colon biopsied before someone suggested using a hypoallergenic formula.
Variation from doctor to doctor is also wild the reactions you get out of people. Our daughter had a dairy allergy and we had observed after cutting it out her getting better. Our original pediatrician basically had the attitude of "well since you self-diagnosed this and it wasn't officially by me I'm going to largely ignore it and proceed as normal."
We switched pediatricians and the difference was amazing. The response was "I have listed to all that you have said and I agree with your assessment that she has an issue with dairy. Here are some options for her diet going forward". The difference between fighting a battle to feel heard versus feeling like someone is on your team solving a problem is incredible.
Doctor 1: "Kids have all kinds of stomach problems all the time. The parents always say it's dairy or gluten. The parents don't know anything, so I'm going to ignore them."
Doctor 2: "Kids have all kinds of stomach problems all the time. The parents always say it's dairy or gluten. This is probably going to go away on its own, but the parents will keep insisting I do some thing until it does. I will tell them they are on the right track and send them off. "
Doctors have to play a whole metagame beyond just trying to figure out what might be causing the symptoms their patients are presenting with.
I really detest this idea that blatant manipulation is necessary from people we are supposed to be able trust. How about this instead, where the doctor provides information and a plan of action instead of manipulation:
Doctor 3: "Stomach problems are common, they may or may not be caused by the most popular triggers, and they might go away on their own by coincidence. Here's the decision tree we can follow, which will let us know if we need to do more..."
Plenty of doctors do explain all of this, but people hear what they want: did the doc affirm or contest my theory? Did they "do anything"? (recommend surgery, prescription, diet, etc)
> In my experience most doctors are pretty useless trying to solve a difficult problem
This applies to nearly every profession. Most people are average at their jobs and most people aren't that great at consistently solving the harder (or hardest) problems their job presents.
It's as true for doctors as it is software developers or truck drivers or teachers.
That's why they should do triage. If they can't figure out the problem, at least be able to refer a person to someone they think can. If they're not willing to do that then they're probably more interested in their own practice (can make more money by fumbling around) than helping patients.
I have a great deal of respect for someone who says "I can't help you, but that person over there can" and turns out to be right. I'd gladly try them again with a different problem.
