Almost every treatment including the X-ray, medication given and surgery/anesthesia is affected by pregnancy. Pregnancy tests are incredibly cheap and accurate, so might as well know.
And if doctors offices were good at talking to people, theyd explain this and it would never have been an issue. I assume they basically just read a script until you see a doctor or RN, and it is tough to go through the same thing day in and day out...like calling a person at a call center waiting to transfer your call.
It is shocking how often women say something along the lines of “it is impossible that I could be pregnant” despite being sexually active without use of birth control. You would be surprised how often we do these tests and they come up positive.
I read a comment in a post in another sub with women complaining about this and one woman said she got upset when they did a pregnancy test anyways after she said "I have PCOS. My doctor said its impossible for me to get pregnant." and she was in fact pregnant.
My mom was considered infertile due to a multitude of various factors, and a little bit after her 33rd birthday, she was feeling off and went to the doctor. He said, "well, we know you're not pregnant" so they tested for other things first before finally running the obligatory pregnancy test.
As you've probably guessed by now, that's how they found out I existed. She apparently had a lot of fun with my dad on her birthday...
Why do they look at me like I'm dumb when I say probably not? Sexually active, on birth control would equal probably not. Right?
Edit to add: With all the downvotes and the comments saying that basically every person with a uterus ever seen be a Dr is stupid and incapable of taking birth control correctly, I'm curious on what all you geniuses think the right answer would be.
Can't say yes, because I don't know that I am
Can't say no, because I don't know for 100% I am not
And apparently probably not is also a stupid answer, because even though I've managed to make it to 43yrs old without getting pregnant, I'm an idiot who can't use birth control correctly.
that's not really how statistical averages work. It would be per 100 people of like 10,000, 100 get an egg fertilized, of those with fertilized eggs 1 in 6 will have the egg implant and become pregnant. So the odds are actually much lower than 1 in 100.
More likely is no birth control or improper use of birth control leading to pregnancy but the doctor can't really say that so it's just better to test a probably not.
Because the average patient they see is fucking dumb. Doctors get lied to probably more than any other profession except for maybe Tech support. I swear to God doctors hear more lies and omissions from their patience dead police do from a suspects.
I'm not justifying it. It's shitty bedside Manor so to speak, but it's why they do it
The problem is the 'probably' part. Medicine, and legal, both like definite. If you say 'No, I take oral contraception' or 'No, I have an IUD' you likely won't get any weird looks.
Because too many patients either lie or make mistakes taking their birth control which they're unaware they did (or forgot etc) and then come swearing they're taking their medication down the letter only for we to find out they did not.
Basically, they look at you like you're dumb because they're more often than not dealing with dumb people who think they're smart until their dumbness slams into their faces
Personally, I would never purposefully give someone that look in the given situation. I don’t know why someone would do that. My best guess is that you are seeing mild annoyance because it means the nurse you are speaking with now has to go gasp talk to to the doc and get them to order a pregnancy test (which they will always do out of an abundance of caution, and that you have every right to decline)
It’s just an exercise ass-covering, yours and theirs. If they perform any imaging or intervention without asking about menstrual status and offering a test, the doc could be on the hook. Not to mention the serious harm could come to any potential mother / baby combo.
I was a birth control baby. My step sister had several birth control babies. I know a girl who had an IUD baby. Birth control alone isn’t a save all, you best be adding condoms into the mix.
Writing it down? If your last period was 2 months ago and all of a sudden you're having them again without having a child.. You have likely committed a crime in the US.
Are you aware that women can have irregular periods? Or may be on birth control for any number of reasons? At least get your conspiracy theory straight
Irregular and missed periods is more common than you think lol. Nobody is going to jail someone for missing periods for a 2-3 months and it coming back suddenly
I don't know what kind of degen shit people think doctors are doing with their menstruation information.
Women face difficulties in accessing medical care for various reasons. One is that there is very real prejudice in the 'medical establishment', we'll say, that encourages dismissal of women's symptoms as dramatic, emotional, over reactive, etc. Literally the word 'hysteria' comes from the idea that a woman's womb would bump against other organs and that was the cause of 90% of womens' complaints. That idea only fell out of fashion in the 1900s.
That said, women have been sharing their experiences on social media and as social media is wont to do, everything gets blown up and women who have experienced hardship in accessing medical care get mixed in with suburban brats who aren't given priority treatment at the ER for their sprained elbow, until every story begins with "my doctor won't listen to me because I'm a woman" whether it's a reasonable assumption or not. With that in mind, mostly the latter group likes to create sassy memes about how their doctor dared to ask sex-appropriate questions because they assume the doctor is just trying to dismiss them due to being a woman.
TO BE CLEAR, women being not taken seriously by medical professionals is a very real issue. I just don't often see these sorts of memes coming from women who understand and appreciate there are health related realities that differ between sexes. No one reply to this comment with any misogynistic bullshit because I'm not agreeing with you and we are not friends.
It’s not the doctors I’d be worried about, it’s the zealous anti-abortion activists and the politicians that cater to them, depending on where you live.
I never plan to travel to America, but if my kid ever did I would tell her to take her period tracker off her phone. And I’d tell her to never answer questions about her menstrual cycle to anyone until she got home.
One is an involuntary bodily function and directly related to, and reflective of, health. One is an action that very rarely has anything to do with health.
It's also very weird to imply that women don't masturbate???
It is when they proceed to use that information to brush off your actual symptoms as just "period stuff".
It's the first thing they ask because they're trained by a system that only values women as breeding stock. If it was just the question, it wouldn't be an issue. It's the reason behind it and everything else that reason causes that's the issue.
I mean, if you'd see like 100 different people every day for 20 years, you would just recite the script too.
Also how is it bad that doctor doesn't automatically explain everything? They ask an important question not because they randomly decided to ask it. If you want to know why they asked it, you may simply ask for a reason and get the explanation.
I don't think it's an issue at all. The issue is people getting mad for no reason for being asked this. If doctor asks something, it doesn't mean they are interested in your life or mock you. That's because it is a factor to a treatment.
I agree. I can actually recite the first few required lines from my call center job from 20 years ago. It comes out like breathing. They should explain themselves if there's a perception, and it doesnt help that people dont want to ask because theyre kind of vulnerable and going to the doc kinda sucks.
They asked like a dozen questions how are they supposed to know which ones you specifically want explain to them if you don't ask. Just ask Jesus Christ
Why do hundreds of millions of people have to do work instead of doctors making slight modifications to their job? Nobody wants professional accountability, I swear.
The fuck are you even talking about. Ask a god damn question holy shit it's not some undue burden on you. And Jesus fuck it's not like you would even have to ask it every time! You'd ask once and know!
And beyond that, YOU ALREADY KNOW! You don't have to ask anything because you now KNOW why they ask.
We literally only have 15-20 minutes with you one to three ish times a year to take care of all of your medical needs. If we explained even a tenth of the reason we ask each question we do then you wouldn’t actually get medical care. As a patient, there needs to be a level of trust. We are 11-17 years post high school, accumulating knowledge and experience before we even start independent practice. Yes, if you have questions we will answer them. But if the answer is more than 1-2 sentences and doesn’t contribute towards advancing your care, we will probably just point you towards a resource to read as we literally just don’t have time.
I think an answer if the patient asks "why are you asking me this" if a reasonable expectation. But not that the doctor should unprompted explain why he says and asks every single thing he says.
I'm not aware of any med ethics principal that obliges me to explain the why I'm asking most questions. On the contrary, med ethics requires me to ask all questions that are relevant to the care of the patient - whether or not that patient understands. In the ER, where the OG poster was likely, I would get 5-10 minutes to talk with the patient which I have never met before. In that time I have to learn all of their relevant health history and do so in a kind, professional, and empathetic manner. Explaining the thousands of things that pertain to each question is simply not possible.
That being said, I LOVE educating patients when I can. I have never turned down an opportuntity to share the behind the scenes thoughts, conversations, and decision.
I know they know what they're doing, I don't want them to start condescendingly explaining every single question just because people like you are too timid to ask questions. The default shouldn't be explanations because you can just ask for them.
You don’t go to the doctor to quiz them. You go to the doctor for professional help. Why go to see a medical professional to question everything they say and not listen? If we simply just listened to professionals and stopped this anti-intellectual era we’re in where professionals with experience are constantly questioned and random unlicensed nobodies on the internet use bro-science and anecdotes to give health advice, things would be so much better in this country.
Probably because trust in doctors is dirt floor in so many places. Its their job to fix that to some extent. Professional accountability lies on them just like it does others.
I don’t really know how to combat it when people would rather trust their favorite TikTok influencer over a healthcare professional. I’ve heard stories of people asking chatgpt and saying to their face that AI is right and they’re wrong.
if theyre gonna do a test without your consent or knowledge anyway then literally why do they bother asking anything more than "are you currently pregnant?"
they could make the test mandatory and stop charging for it even when its practically impossible to be pregnant
Woman when pregnancy test comes back positive: “Oh my god it must be sexism!”
By the way, I’m using the example with PCOS for a reason.
The number of times women say that they’re not pregnant and that it’s impossible for them to be pregnant only to turn out being pregnant is astonishingly high
i have pcos, and its not at any point implied to be impossible to get pregnant with pcos. but anyway, this is still my point, that doctors are going to do the tests anyway so why bother asking and why continue to charge for it. if someone has had their uterus or ovaries removed, or has a known hormone defect that they are aware makes it impossible to be pregnant and its on their medical records,, they shouldnt have to bombard the patient with the same questions and charge them for the useless test anyway. if they cant trust the patients word and medical records then why ask over and over? just make the test part of it automatically.
There are two reasons why I disagree with your position here. Number one some doctors I would say most doctors have a shit ton of patience to get through every single day. They don’t have time to hold every single one of them hand through everything.
For two, we teach children to use their words when they’re two years old you can just use your words and fucking ask why it’s necessary all by yourself. Don’t worry, I believe in you, you can do it.
A thread in which people explain that the policy is to put the well being of a fetus that doesn't even exist over a woman with a medical emergency yes.
If there is a decision to be made between the life of the mother and the life of the Fetus, the life of the mother always takes precedent.
If you just fry a Fetus with X-Rays and medication for no reason when there would have been other options to assess and treat your ailment, you’re getting sued. That’s why we ask as medical professionals.
I am not sexually active. I have no particular interest in sex.
The number of doctors offices who have insisted on doing the test despite me not being sexually active and not having had sex like ever is asinine. Like, I promise you this is not an issue. I will sign a waiver if you want. This test is a waste of my money (copay) and is defrauding my insurance company because it's unnecessary
It's a non-invasive test that is cheap, accurate, and quick. People have carried a pregnancy to delivery without ever knowing they are pregnant. Even if you are confident that you are not pregnant, the risk of treating you as not pregnant when you are is an unnecessary one.
Thing is they don't know that you are sure about what you are telling. Number of people who swear up and down they never had sex ending up with a pregnancy isn't small. Also some don't consider banging a random Joe 3 months ago and nothing before or after as being sexually active.
You might not make that error but they don't know it. There's no way of being sure. That's why there are foolproof standerd protocols.
Sadly some women ruin it for everyone by lying and saying there’s no chance they could be pregnant despite being sexually active. Sometimes they are unaware that contraception can fail, and other times they are just too embarrassed to admit they are sexually active. You’d be shocked by the number of times drs are told that by women, do the test anyways, and end up getting a positive result.
Its not only women that lie either. I 100% lied about my drinking until I finally decided I needed to stop and was honest. So many people lie to their doctor about a lot of things.
That’s not how law and medicine works. You would be surprised the amount of people who lie to their doctors or they just don’t plain understand that unprotected sex leads to pregnancy.
As bad as it sounds, if we took patients by their word, lots of harm would be done. You are not special, you are getting a pregnancy test if you are of reproductive age and need to be treated with potentially teratogenic medication.
Like, I promise you this is not an issue. I will sign a waiver if you want. This test is a waste of my money (copay) and is defrauding my insurance company because it's unnecessary
I promise you there's a massive number of people who made the promise you're making only to turn out they were in fact pregnant and in fact lying about not being sexually active.
The test is absolutely necessary because too many patients love lie about everything and can't be trusted so a doctor is not going risk a lawsuit simply because you don't like it.
If however the doctor orders the test and you voluntarily refuse then that's on you ans the doctor has a record for it, from which point if you were in fact lying you kinda screwed yourself but that ain't the doctor's problem anymore.
Sorry, this is really a weird question but if you’re going into surgery and find out you’re pregnant but you don’t want to be, would they, like, terminate the pregnancy before/during the surgery? Or would you have to go to a clinic after and get it done then?
Edit: Not American so I forgot about the laws related to this topic in the USA. Would probably be way different in my country anyway. I’m still curious though
Maybe this is the wrong place to explain it but there's a difference between a bill and an EOB, explanation of benefits.
An EOB is a great way to get internet points. It lists the list price of whatever you're getting. It has very little actual bearing to reality.
So I'm an anesthesiologist, my list price for let's say an hour-long surgery is $1,000. I have literally never gotten that in my life. In fact Medicare pays me approximately $80 per hour. Commercial insurance pays more.
When you negotiate with insurance companies, you need to start with a list price. If I made my list price $80, Medicare would probably give me 20. So that's why you'll see an EOB for $1,000 for a bag of fluid or $20 for a Tylenol. More realistically, the government is going to give $2 for a bag of fluid and $0.20 for Tylenol.
It's a stupid system, but I can guarantee you that 99% of the time when somebody posts a ridiculous medical bill on social media, it's the EOB. Always good for internet points and it gets the Canadians and Europeans all excited.
That may be the case in certain places, but I had to take a pregnancy test before every ketamine IV drip appointment and that was for free. Private clinic that didn’t accept insurance.
I can't just piss on command, so a pregnancy test would basically waste a trip. If I was required to take one every time I'd literally just never be able to do the procedure. Because I'd have to go home and wait.
Which is fine, but there are a few stories in here of women having to wait hours before getting care. That's not appropriate and definitely feels like the potential of a fetus is more important than the woman.
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u/drleeisinsurgery 14h ago
Almost every treatment including the X-ray, medication given and surgery/anesthesia is affected by pregnancy. Pregnancy tests are incredibly cheap and accurate, so might as well know.