To a certain extent the "hear horses not zebras" thing makes sense. Medical staff is always short on time and resources, so optimizing for the 99% makes sense, even if it sucks for the 1%.
But if this is combined with a superiority complex and/or a "patients are idiots" attitude, that's when things turn from annoying to critical.
Absolutely. The issue with the horses not zebras ideology is when they treat it as a rule. I’ve dealt with several times where my medical care was worsened or delayed because of a refusal to acknowledge the things that I am saying about the experience I’m having in my body in favor of giving me a common diagnosis and a short round of medication.
Patients, especially patients in chronic pain, have a pretty good tendency to connect with others that share their experiences and find the right medical terms to describe their sensations. In my experience doctors hate this. They treat you like you came in to pretend you have a condition.
Add onto all of this that I’m trans and it just fucking blows to deal with doctors, because even when they tell you they’re giving you care, they apply standards that apply to your assigned gender rather than the one that your body is operating as with hormones. (Most Common with BMI, I’m currently considered underweight on my chart based on the male scale despite being high energy, active, and healthy in all other respects)
Yeah, my kid has a chronic condition that (among a lot of other things) affect how well bandaids and medical tape stick to the kid's skin (they don't stick well at all).
Every time they had to stick down something to their skin (e.g. a canula), we'd say "Please use tons of tape otherwise it won't stick". Everytime they ignored us, and when they had to repeat putting in the canula they were like "Oh, looks like it really doesn't stick". Yeah, genius.
Tbf, if patients are even remotely similar to customers that talk with technical support (me), then they are idiots. It is absurd how often people lie when they know I can see that. And scrolling through the replies here it seems to be common for patient to just lie about stupid stuff as well.
Except if the customer is not an idiot and the tech support just has it wrong. It might happen less in this direction, but it does happen.
So making it a "hard rule" that the customer/patient is an idiot will set you up for real trouble in some circumstances.
Especially, since the stakes are usually much higher in medicine than in tech support. The worst you can do as a tech support is delete user data or brick a replacable piece of tech.
If you mess up in medicine, people can die or take life-long damage.
If you're keeping your equipment and software working well, then the only thing that can consistently go wrong is the end user. Really you're just filtering for tickets from idiots by being even remotely good at IT. Healthcare is different because it's not a skill issue.
If you're keeping your equipment and software working well, then the only thing that can consistently go wrong is the end user. Really you're just filtering for tickets from idiots by being even remotely good at IT. Healthcare is different because it's not a skill issue.
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u/Square-Singer Jul 31 '26
To a certain extent the "hear horses not zebras" thing makes sense. Medical staff is always short on time and resources, so optimizing for the 99% makes sense, even if it sucks for the 1%.
But if this is combined with a superiority complex and/or a "patients are idiots" attitude, that's when things turn from annoying to critical.