Are Doctors Too Confident in Their Diagnostic Skills?

This tidbit of information probably wouldn’t surprise many of us who have fibromyalgia (FMS) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or ME/CFS) - according to a special edition of The American Journal of Medicine, doctors misdiagnose people about 15% of the time.

I’d guess the rate is probably a lot higher for some ailments than for others, especially when you consider conditions that don’t come wrapped in neat little packages complete with reliable diagnostic tests.

According the the AJM, many doctors simply don’t believe that their own error rate could be that high and pass the buck to “others who are less skillful or less careful.”

The authors say it’s usually the cases doctors see as routine and unchallenging that are most often misdiagnosed, while with harder cases they’re more likely to seek out other opinions or use computerized diagnostic tools.

As scary as this is, it makes sense. Any math teacher will tell you it’s the simple things like addition and subtraction that’ll trip their algebra students. It’s natural to pay less attention to something you feel like you’ve done a thousand times before.

While the diagnostic error rate isn’t surprising to me (after all, I had a handful of misdiagnoses before my FMS was recognized), I wonder if we can use some of this information to our advantage.

Look at it this way: how often do you suppose a doctor hears, “I’m tired all the time”? Constantly. The answer? “Get more sleep” or “Take this pill.”

Maybe something more specific, such as “I’m exhausted as if I had the flu and it takes me 2 days to recover from even a little bit of exertion” would get their attention.

For doctors who don’t believe in these diseases, probably nothing will help. For the better ones, though, maybe it just takes a few key words or phrases to get them out of a mental rut and make them think a little harder about what you’re saying.

How many times have you been misdiagnosed? Take the poll, and share your stories here or in About.com’s Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome forum.

Adrienne Dellwo