If, when we had a health or well-being question/problem, we could do a Google search and locate the best one, two or three people most likely to help us if we had a personal consultation with them, life would be SO much easier. We believe passionately that the Australian people, in fact the people of the world, are being seriously held back in caring for their health and well-being by the fact that this is not the case – and, in fact we’re a million miles away from this being the case.
When we got an email from one of our readers, asking simply, “What can cause discoloration of the skin?” and started trying to help her, we have been astonished at how far away we are from this being the case.
Amongst other things, there is this list of 32 “Areas of Interest” on the Australasian College of Dermatologist’s website, and “discoloration of the skin” is not one of them! – not unless it’s covered by one of the unintelligible “Areas of Interest,” of which there are about 10! And we also found this article claiming that there could be 38 different causes for discoloration of the skin.
And then there’s the problem of doctors who claim to have “expertise” in as many as 10 or 12 areas – to us, anyone claiming to have expertise in more than 2 or 3 areas is likely to be talking rubbish if they stray into some of these areas.
As we wrote to our reader, trying to find, the best one, two or three dermatologists in Sydney likely to have the very best solutions for her problems would appear to be like looking for needles in a haystack, from amongst the hundreds of dermatologists who would be “waste of time waste of money” doctors.
We are working on lists like the one referred to in this post in an attempt to help with this problem.