Ask HN: How do you find good doctors?
This has been a huge problem for me with veterinary doctors. Sorry if this turns a bit long, it was quite an experience in incompetency and confusion.<p>Unfortunately we did not look for a good veterinarian until we had an actual emergency. I am making this same mistake with my own health right now - I do not have a regular doctor. It seems difficult to do so - vets don&#x27;t expect to be personally screened, especially when the patient is completely healthy and doesn&#x27;t actually need their attention yet! We looked up well reviewed clinics and such, but did no research into the individuals themselves.<p>When a well reviewed clinic messed up a routine surgery on my kitten and sent him into a month of hospital stays and more surgeries, it was all too rushed and panicked to find a good vet. When you are rushing your pet to the hospital emergency room twice a day or leaving him there for days to weeks at a time, you don&#x27;t get to pick the vet; it is whoever is on-call at the time. Aside from that, I am sure the vets you get are generally competent at their jobs, <i>but</i> they have piles of journals and history from previous days to catch up to and you have to keep rehashing the details with each one. Not to mention the fact that they are on-call to deal with multiple emergencies and can&#x27;t really give one patient their undivided attention.<p>It is a long story, but he ended up staying at a teaching hospital several hours away because nobody at our local hospital seemed to be able to figure out what was going on, and we had been told that it was meant to be among the best in the country. They did all they could, and did help, but in the end even they gave up on him and sent him home to be put to sleep. It&#x27;s a miracle he&#x27;s still here with us.<p>&quot;Funnily&quot; enough after he was home we found out there was a highly regarded internal medicine specialist at this local hospital 5km away - we were told that he&#x27;s seen all the specialists. We searched for specialists online before and never saw her name. We coincidentally got an appointment with her after the main part of this incident was over and our cat was back home but very touch and go (a receptionist said &quot;We have a free slot with our internal medicine specialist, she&#x27;s a little more expensive, but she&#x27;s great!&quot;, like it was nothing - like we hadn&#x27;t just spent a month looking for specialists who could help him). The specialist said she wished she saw him sooner - she&#x27;d have made some different choices. We now see her every 6 months for checkups. It really highlighted the communication breakdown that can happen in a rushed emergency situation like this, if she&#x27;d just seen him sooner maybe he would&#x27;ve have had to go through as much as he did.<p>I wish there was a better way to find veterinary doctors, but aside from doing as much research as possible (about the doctor <i>and</i> the condition in question) and trial-and-error in terms of which vet you get I still don&#x27;t know of the best way. The only thing I know is now that we&#x27;ve found a good one, having gone through so many questionable choices made by other professionals in that month, I&#x27;m afraid to see anyone else. I have even less idea with human doctors and don&#x27;t know if any of this is transferable to human experiences.