Posted by Jane D on June 13, 2001, at 9:58:08
In reply to Re: Psychiatrist Online? Of course! » sl, posted by kazoo on June 13, 2001, at 0:36:18
> > Let me be more specific.
> > One who I can have a regular doctor/patient relationship with, who can write prescriptions and is knowledgeable about what to change my meds to.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Well, that clears up everything, thank you very much!
>
> Do you think for one blistering moment that any self-respecting psychiatrist, or any medical person for that matter, will casually write you a script on-line, virtually sight-unseen? You might be better off trying to find an "800" number service to do that, good grief. There is, believe it or not, a human side to the "doctor/patient relationship" you so desire.
...
> What you need to do is to find a real, live psychiatrist, or psychotherapist, or psychopharmacologist, whom you can sit opposite of, for you to discuss your lot in life with using the King's English, for them to listen to you intently, so that they may pick up a pen and apply to a prescription pad to write out orders for medicine that you need and will help you. This is the way it is done. This is the way it's always been done. It is done this way because it is TIME TESTED, and it works well. Don't expect anything else because to do so would be to sell yourself short of getting real, quality help.
Kazoo -
I don't think sl was asking for someone to 'casually' write a prescription. That you can already find on the internet, at least for now. I think he was asking if any medical doctors were willing to establish an on line relationship. I think it's a reasonable question. Maybe the answer is no and should continue to be no but it's worth discussing.It's fine to say that face to face is better but what if that's not possible? Not driving is a huge problem many places. So is lack of money. It sounds like you're saying that if you can't get the best treatment you shouldn't have any. That's only justifiable if you can show that this compromise treatment is worse than no treatment at all. It's similar to arguing that GP's shouldn't prescribe antidepressants because psychiatrists do it better. Encouraging GP's to treat depression has meant that many more people are treated and the psychiatrists seem to be as busy as ever.
Having said all that I'm not sure that prescribing drugs should be done this way. They do have physical effects as well as the psychological. Monitoring these without being face to face would be hard. But there might be a way around this. I believe videoconferencing is already used by some hospitals for consultations and every corner drug store seems to have a blood pressure machine. A doctor would need to rely more on what a patient told her than on what she could see and liability laws would need to be changed to reflect this. Would this be such a bad thing?
Jane (who still remembers once being too broke to afford the 'real thing')
poster:Jane D
thread:66219
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010612/msgs/66309.html