I have never watched your show, but I hate you nonetheless. You are the hero of my patients. Many of them believe you are a real doctor, and not Hugh Laurie, an actor. I bet most of them don't even know that you have an English accent. They wouldn't care if they could have you as their doctor instead of me. They believe you are out there, somewhere ... yet they are stuck with me.
Am I not charming? I am. House is not, but that does not seem to matter to patients. Am I not well-studied? I am (good enough, smart enough, and Gosh-darn it, people like me). What does House have that I don't? Hollywood. And what has Hollywood created that I am unable to? An answer. Every patient, the complicated/bizarre ones and the more straightforward ones - all of them get ANSWERS. What do my patients get? "Here is what probably happened ..." or "Here is what you don't have ..." This drives them CRAZY.
"Well, doctor, when WILL we know what happened to me when I passed out?" I take a deep breath.
"We may never know. I can take the aspects of what you have told me, put together an idea of what happened, and then assess you for some life threatening problems and try to make sure it was not one of those problems." I explain what those are. I explain that this will take 1-2 days, and then I can likely send them home if the testing checks out, and they are feeling well. I pause. This usually goes over like a lead balloon, and about the time some ask request a House, MD consult. Or, my personal favorite - a CSI consult.
"You need those CSI people. They use all sorts of crazy science, and they always figure out what happened." I usually nod to this, not mentioning that a murder had taken place when CSI is called, and they would have to die in a violent way for me to call them.
I understand where these feelings come from. We think of doctors like mechanics. Hook it up to the diagnostic machine when the check engine light comes on, and then fix the problem. We certainly order a lot of tests in medicine, probably too many, but often they are just suggestive, and not diagnostic. My great Aunt Celia told me once that you can never be sure of ANYTHING except death and having to pay taxes. When someone is sick and scared, though, no one wants to hear about uncertainty. OFTEN there is no definite answer. I can't reconstruct your crime scene. I can't say it is for sure your brake pads need replacing and you will never pass out again. I can tell you you didn't have a heart attack, and I can tell you it is unlikely you had a stroke, and I can tell you the most common causes of passing out, and which one likely happened to you. Common things are common, and what happened to you is probably not a bizarre presentation of Ebola. I will listen to your fears, and do my best to try to calm them, but we can only be sure of death and taxes. If anyone tells you they know what happened to you with certainty, they probably also carry a SAG card.
In the future, please ask me for a Car Talk brothers consult - they are more into the art of medicine that I feel comfortable with.
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