As stated, being informed is encouraged. Self-diagnosis is not for anyone to do.
I think another issue here is your expectations out of a medical visit may be unrealistic. Physicians aren’t supposed to arrive at the correct diagnosis from the initial visit (for most things). We start with a suspected diagnosis and differential and refine it with investigations and multiple visits for temporality/evolution.
Note that in your hypothetical that probably and possible are not mutually exclusive. It’s entirely possible patient A’s right upper quadrant pain is a gallbladder cancer but it is also probably gallstones even if you tell me the pain isn’t triggered by fatty meals. Just because a preliminary diagnosis is stated as probable it doesn’t mean other potential causes aren’t being simultaneously investigated with that ultrasound. I also don’t need to be telling the patient about all of the potential possibilities from the get go as it may cause anxiety, this is a patient-specific judgement call.
> In a perfect world, patients would get hour long appointments and doctors would explore the entire fault tree.
Honestly, outside of counseling type visits or complex oncology I’m not sure what I would spend an hour talking about. Why do feel we need to explore the entire fault tree in a single visit with missing investigations?
As a hypothetical: 50 y/o male patient comes in with first time rectal bleeding, I’ll ask a few questions and perform a physical exam but regardless of the fault tree or why this happened, this patient is getting a colonoscopy. Until we’ve excluded cancer and inflammatory bowel disease further discussion is moot.
