Happy One Year Anniversary to this Page! Pour a cuppa, mammies. Time for a little reflection.
One year ago today, I was inspired by discussion in both online and real-life mammy groups (yes, that includes you, my local Mammies in Meath!), as well as my real-life practice, to start this social media project.
The mammy group debates about Dr. Google advice, local ill-advised or unethical alternative therapies, and vaccine hesitancy resonated deeply with me because in my real life practice over the years, I have met too many families in hospital quiet rooms. The patients who had been conned out of money they didn’t have, the families taking unpaid time off of work that they couldn’t afford, and those cheated out of precious time they didn’t have by unethical and unsafe and unregulated alternative practitioners. Children with devastating effects of vaccine preventable diseases or other serious diseases, such as asthma, that could have easily been treated by conventional medicine. Families asked me if they were foolish. They asked me what could be done.
So, one year ago, I tried to take some of these discussions out of that room – so that we didn’t meet in there.
As a doctor, I have had an amazing advantage in my parenting journey with 4 y.o. T. and Baby C.: I am not only surrounded daily by knowledgeable colleagues, but I have access to the information I need and trusted expert resources (online or otherwise). As I’ve talked about over the year, even with all that, motherhood isn’t smooth sailing for any of us. You’ve all read about my own baby in NICU, T.’s struggles with CMPA and colic, Baby C.’s weaning and teething, feeling foolish in front of my own GP with 3 y.o. T.
This didn’t used to be such an advantage. Mammy had the local GP. As my colleague puts it, “mammy had the path bate to the GP’s door” – and quite rightly so. The GP expected it, supported it, and the community was happier and healthier for it. The current doctor shortage has led to physician burn-out, long waiting lists, inaccessible GPs and ultimately the breakdown the traditional doctor-patient relationship.
The patient-doctor relationship is further undermined as this void is filled by Dr. Google and an alternative industry worth billions of € on “what doctors don’t want you to know” click-bait and unregulated therapies/supplements. This US-based conspiracy theory doesn’t even pass even a superficial scrutiny in Europe. While it might be believable to some Americans in a for-profit health system that doctors/ Big Pharma are hiding cures, what possible motivation could over-worked/under-resourced doctors, nurses, and allied health professional have to get more unsubsidized business in a socialist-health model? Surely, we should be the first ones to suggest you try ill-advised cranberry juice or ineffective tea tree oil or just ridiculous salt caves rather than further crowd the waiting room. We should be the first ones to tell you to skip vaccines that take precious resources – time, effort, and money – to administer. Big Pharma should be the first to switch to pushing products that are not regulated and therefore have less overhead/higher profit ratio. And yet we don’t. Because we know it isn’t right. It doesn’t work. The long nights of study and long days of clinics notwithstanding, it’s not what we signed up for.
I’m proud to be a member of a growing number of physicians who are finding a voice to speak out against quackery, exploitation, and con-men who take advantage of misinformation to harm and exploit vulnerable patients. There have been older physicians who have spoken out publicly and in media that the voices of doctors and scientists don’t belong on social media. No, I don’t believe that is true. I believe that the voice not only of doctors, but that of scientists and expert health professionals needs to be heard: a balanced, reasoned voice against quackery, financial exploitation, and attention-seeking fear-mongerers.
We are currently in a “post-truth” age of “alternative facts”. Our social media feeds, where statistically most of us now get our news, are full of misinformation and fear-mongering and patently bad/dangerous advice. The consequences of this are very real: Brexit and economic impact is looming. The now-under-impeachment-enquiry US presidency has become a source of global mockery rather than democracy. We are seeing the catastrophic return of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, and polio. Unbelievably, a large percentage of the population doesn’t “believe” in climate change, as if it were a superstitious practice rather something definitely proven by volumes of data collected by world leading scientists. For an inexplicable reason, people are trusting a celebrity using shocking medical advice to garner attention/promote their brand – over expert paediatricians. It’s a topic well-explored not only in Dr. David Robert Grimes’ recent book “The Irrational Ape” and Dr. Paul Offit’s “Bad Advice”. (Links at end of post.)
Not at all on par with their works, but I hope this page has challenged you all to critically think through where you are getting your families’ health advice and to work with your doctor. The unexpected side effect is that I have learned so much, oh, so much, for you all! Your voices on alternative therapies, things that you were too embarrassed or afraid to tell your doctor, the hesitancies you had in communication with your midwife, the fears you have had after consulting Dr. Google. It has made me re-think the modern doctor-patient relationship. These have influenced my communication with my real-life patients, hopefully for the better. I have also incorporated what I have learned into peer and medical student education.
Over the past year, this informal project has enjoyed great support from an amazing group of followers, from both my real-life medical and nursing colleagues across different specialties, as well as online support from other doctors who are doing similar work in their communities #somedocs. Thank you, everyone.
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