Doctor’s Dilemma
The medical field is currently running into a problem where the patients are being overprescribed antibiotics, but since the patient’s satisfaction are being linked to the doctor’s evaluation, the doctors’ have no choice but to do so. When I went to the doctors last summer for a stomach virus, my doctor told me there was nothing she could do besides to tell me to drink lots of fluids and to wait it out. To be completely honest, I was upset because I took the time to go to the doctor and wanted to get better quickly. I walked out of that doctor’s office, feeling as if I wasted my time. Even though my doctor told me her honest opinion in this situation and I’m grateful she did so, a majority are forced to choose otherwise and to prescribe antibiotics in order to appease the patient.
This phenomenon is loosely tied to the prisoner’s dilemma. The example the article gave was between opioids, doctors, and patients. It’s in the doctor’s best interest in both cases, the patient has real or fake pain, to prescribe opioids because either the patient genuinely needs them or the patient will give the doctor a bad satisfaction score, which would hurt the doctor’s reputation. In the long run, this situation will only hurt the society and patients who are faking pain to gain access to opiates because those patients are not being treated for their opioid addiction and will start to see the consequences of opioid abuse. Further, the society will be hurt because these patients with this addiction are not going to be contributing to society and they will be costing thousands due to the cost of the opiates and the later cost of treatment for the side effects of opiate abuse (e.g. rehab and other expenses).
Similarly, the prisoner’s dilemma can be tied to the over-prescription of antibiotics. It’s in the doctor’s best interest to give antibiotics whether the patient needs it or not. If the patient needs antibiotics for a bacterial infection, then the doctor should rightfully treat them with the best course of medicine (i.e. antibiotics). On the other hand, if the patient doesn’t need antibiotics (e.g he/she has a virus like I did), the patient would either switch doctors until one of them agrees with to treat him with unnecessary antibiotics or be upset and less trusting of his doctor; both would negatively affect the doctor. Even though prescribing antibiotics is in the doctor’s best interest and in the patient’s best interest, they are both worse off because doctors overprescribing antibiotics is contributing to the rising cost of healthcare and the emergence of “superbugs”.