Overestimating
A study in JAMA found that patient expectations regarding the benefits and harms of any treatment, tests or screenings are vastly unrealistic. In 88 percent of the benefit expectation outcomes studied, authors concluded participants tended to overestimate the benefits of treatment. In 67 percent of the harm expectation outcomes studied, patients vastly underestimated the harm that would result from treatments, tests and screenings, according to the report. The conclusions were:
The majority of participants overestimated intervention benefit and underestimated harm. Clinicians should discuss accurate and balanced information about intervention benefits and harms with patients, providing the opportunity to develop realistic expectations and make informed decisions.
I agree but the issue is time. Grinding through a 22-25 patient per day schedule will never allow you enough time to document much less speak candidly to patients. Those expectations may be more unrealistic than patient expectations. But there is way to do this. And I am doing it. It is called DPC.
Now compare that study to what you might get when you study psychiatrists, and this one looks tame. Psychiatrists, as a general rule, believe their meds are wonder drugs with no negative side effects (or at least, none which cannot be treated with yet another drug or changing to a different wonder drug) and no possibility of addiction or misuse.
Anyone prescribing a drug whose effects they only have learned about from marketing agents is failing as a doctor.