‘Patient requests for second opinions should not feel like a personal criticism’
Dr Marion Mateos says before she researched second opinions she thought she'd failed as a doctor if a patient sought one.
A new study has been published on requests for second opinions by the families of children being treated by oncologists at Sydney Children’s Hospital.
It found that more than three-quarters of the 80 oncologists surveyed said they were receiving email requests from families previously unknown to them.
And in the majority of cases they were providing a second opinion.
However, as Dr Marion Mateos, a Sydney paediatric oncologist and lead author of the study explains, many doctors say they are in need of guidelines.
