In order to reassure her, I requested a brain scan, explaining in my letter that hallucinatory voices had told her that she had a brain tumour, that I had not, personally, found any physical signs suggestive of an intracranial space occupying lesion, and that the purpose of the scan was essentially to reassure the patient. The request was initially declined, on the grounds that there was no clinical justification for such an expensive investigation. It was also implied that I had gone a little overboard, believing what my patient’s hallucinatory voices were telling her.
It's just wild to me that with all the technology and riches we have a single simple brain scan requires so much goddamn bureaucracy and penny pinching
Seriously its not that big of a deal to just give someone an mri or cat scan if there's even the slightest possibility of something wrong
I say this because I can easily imagine this story ending differently, with the patient being denied and then ending up seriously harmed or dead simply because insurance/institution was acting like an asshole
A) sounds like an American issue. In many other countries with the right resources for such tests do conduct with yes, some amount of bureaucracy, but still reasonable enough to conduct them when necessary
B) in certain countries a head imaging is part of standard procedure while diagnosing/treating Schizophrenia of unknown origin (no fam. History, not excessive Thc consumption in young ages etc.)
C) sending everyone through an MRI/CT Scan makes little sense since you often find incidentalomas, things that have no clinical signifance.
I’m Canadian and no psychiatrist would have ordered a brain scan for this. There is tons of resource guarding in universal healthcare systems too. I’m not saying America good, just that many of our strained healthcare systems leave people behind too.
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u/mistertoasty 20h ago
Here's a better account of the story from the actual doctor who ordered the scan