Patient experience is quite bad, doctor isn’t patient centric.
Visited via a referral to dig deeper on recurring male UTI/prostatitis issue - just felt like urinating more often, no pain and fever. From the first visit, was told to go for a cystoscope in addition to a blood test, urine test and CT scan. Conversation with him felt pretty dismissive, when asking questions, he will just pause and move on, making it seem like anything you say is ridiculous and not important.
Refused the cystoscopy as it felt ridiculous to do an invasive procedure from the get go without any further test. Cystoscopy might end up creating more scar tissue, leading to more harm than good.
Funnily enough, when asked about the cost of cystoscopy, he said that if it’s too expensive, you can choose not to do??? Doesn’t that mean it’s not necessary?
After receiving positive WBC in urine, but negative bacterial culture, I asked the doctor what else can be done and he simply said ‘we can’t do anything without doing the scope’. He wasn’t interested to entertain the possibility that my symptoms may be due to nothing more than prostatitis - there are test for this.
The whole visit felt as though he is only interested in pushing for unnecessary procedures, and if you don’t comply, you don’t get any treatment.
P.S.
- during the follow up, I waited for 2h without any update on what’s next. Right after I went to the toilet at the 2h mark, they suddenly asked if I have a full bladder for a urine flow test? Full bladder is something that needs to be prepared hours in advance, could they not have brief me before the visit? Or even while I was waiting?
- Went to another urologist for a second opinion and the diagnosis was prostatitis. The specialist also agreed that going for cystoscopy from the get go was weird and unnecessary.