Where does the responsibility for geomedicine lie – with the physician, or with the patient?
If your physician thinks your symptoms reflect an environmental cause, then he/she should certainly ask you more about your personal geographic “place” history. And patients should tell their doctor if they think they have been exposed to a toxic substance. But it is often what we don’t know and see in and around our environments that is the most harmful to our health. So the government bears some of the responsibility as well. The recent news stories of the identification of longterm pediatric cancer cluster in Florida by the US Centers for Disease Control and of the contaminated well water and soil from the long-term disposal of hexavalent chromium in a rural Pennsylvania community by the US Environmental Protection Agency are good examples. One thing that both of these events have in common is the need to identify the many people that lived near this contamination long before it was identified as a potential threat – a role physicians and patients cannot fill, but a responsibility b
Related Questions
- My family physician is interested in getting information about taking care of a patient with HHT. Is there a standard protocol that should be followed?
- Does the physician need to sign a consent form before a patient places an order?
- What is a physician’s responsibility to a patient and the ED while on-call?
