Getting a Second Opinion From a Doctor Isn’t Always Practical
/By Crystal Lindell
The first thing I did when I started dealing with debilitating chronic pain was go to the emergency room. The second thing I did was follow up with a local primary care physician.
But when nothing improved after a few months and multiple appointments with the doctor, I did what I had always been told to do in such a situation: I sought out a “second opinion.”
Alas, the second doctor wasn’t any help either. Neither were the third, fourth, or fifth.
If you’re dealing with any sort of complex health issue, odds are high that you’ve also had a bad experience with a doctor. Perhaps they dismissed your symptoms, refused to treat your pain, or maybe they were just plain mean.
A common refrain from healthy people in such a situation is: “Just get a second opinion.”
It comes across like common sense, especially in a consumer-culture where it’s smart to shop around. And while I wouldn’t advise against getting a second opinion – I have obviously done it myself on many occasions – there are some very important warnings that need to be included here.
One, getting a second opinion is both expensive and time consuming – assuming it’s even possible in the first place.
You can’t just leave your doctor’s office, walk next store and ask for a different doctor. You have to call around, find someone willing to take your insurance, and hope to get an appointment sometime in the next six months. A lot of people, understandably, just don’t have the resources for such a task, especially when they aren’t feeling well.
Plus, when you do finally get in to see them, there’s a good chance they won’t be any help. So, you’re just out the time, the money, and the energy it took to get to their office.
Not to mention the fact that if you live in a rural area, a second opinion could be next to impossible. There are many places in the United States where there literally is no second doctor within 100 miles to opine.
Personally, I spent thousands of dollars traveling around the Midwest seeking out second opinions – including two fruitless trips to the Mayo Clinic. In the end, I was left with insurmountable medical debt and medical system burnout.
While I was eventually diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, that did not happen because I sought a second opinion. It happened because multiple readers emailed me to suggest I look into it, so I brought it up to my doctor, and they sent me to a specialist to confirm it.
Second opinions don’t just drain you though. There’s another, more hidden aspect to them as well.
If you go to a different doctor to get a second opinion, you could be accused of something called “doctor shopping.”
The term is specifically used to dismiss patients who seek out second opinions, and most commonly, pain patients.
It’s a code doctors use to frame a patient's desire for a second opinion as an effort to “score” opioid pain meds like a criminal.
Of course, in real life, if you’re actually dealing with horrible pain and the doctor you see is refusing to treat it, it makes total sense to look for a physician who will treat it. Any human in that situation would do the same thing. Pain refuses to be ignored.
But common sense is not a factor if you are given the label of “doctor shopping” in your chart. Such a note will be used to dismiss all of your pain going forward.
Plus, in the age of easily transferable electronic health records, once anything like that gets put in your file, every doctor you visit will likely see it.
So, while it’s entirely understandable that loved ones will often advise their sick family and friends to get a second opinion if they aren’t finding relief or answers from their doctor, it’s important to remember that it’s not always that simple.
Of course, in a perfect world, patients wouldn’t even need to worry about second opinions, because the first doctor they saw would be kind, thorough and effective. We don’t live in that world though, so patients are left to navigate a lot of imperfect choices.
