BMJ  2006;333:305 (5 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7562.305-b

Letter

Doctors and patients need to hunt together

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—In the outcome of the interactive case report of his case, Neville vividly describes his frustration with the failure to explain his symptoms: the awareness of the ebbing away of doctors' sympathy, the wish that investigations would find something—anything—wrong, and so end the uncertainty.¹

Failure to find a cause for a problem is frustrating for doctors and patients, but it helps no one if doctors protect themselves from their failure by distancing themselves from the patient. We all know the frustration of failure to find a cause for a problem, if only when the engineer comes to look at the washing machine. When telling a patient the result of an investigation it is surely more helpful to say what the investigation rules out than just to say that it is normal. "This test shows that your problem is not due to kidney disease, cancer, or a fracture, but . . . [Full text of this article]

Caversham Group Practice, London NW5 2UP judith.harvey@btclick.com

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