Fear-based medicine is taking a considerable toll on the U.S. healthcare system. Fear-based medicine is the practice of doctors allowing their fears to drive their decisions and to use fear to impact patients’ decision-making in agreeing to unwarranted high-risk and high-cost procedures. Some physicians are so scared of appearing ignorant in front of their patients or being sued for malpractice that they prioritize protecting themselves and their practices over what might be best for their patients. 

This mindset eventually leads to a form of defensive paralysis as charts are filled out to protect against liability, tests are ordered by rote, and knowledgeable patients or those with unusual health issues become “problematic.” 

One survey on defensive medicine found that 91% of U.S. physicians admitted to ordering more tests and procedures than their patients needed simply to avoid malpractice lawsuits. This shows fear drives much of what doctors do, costing patients time, money, and their health. 

A common pathway to disability that we see is physicians throwing in a lumbar puncture unnecessarily among one of these tests, causing a spinal leak that is not patched correctly, and leading to the patients’ loss of their job, housing, and sometimes, eventually, their life to suicide after years of fighting for an epidural blood patch to be administered correctly.   

Physicians in the U.S. face constant pressures, from malpractice anxiety (which is largely unfounded, as tort reform in several states makes it nearly impossible for many patients to sue even after undergoing egregious error and harm) to concerns regarding damage to their reputations. Many physicians cope with these stressors by acting as if they’re all-knowing entities. This means many doctors view admitting uncertainty as taboo. 

The current environment teaches young U.S. doctors to project an air of certainty at all costs. For example, an attending physician might fake competence regarding a case they don’t understand, and the trainee is expected to follow suit. This creates a vicious cycle over time as fear-based medicine breeds more fear-based medicine while patients suffer.

Healthcare systems don’t have to work this way. In other regions, such as Latin America, openness about uncertainty and collaboration rule the day, not ego. Colombian physicians have explained to us that they are trained in classes in medical school on maintaining a warm relationship with patients, which gives them the foundation and the courage to say, “I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.” This openness is the antidote to fear-based medicine and the problems it brings. 

Fear-Based Medicine: The Hidden Enemy in Healthcare

In fear-based medicine or defensive medicine, protecting the physician’s ego or avoiding legal problems takes priority over listening to patients or thinking outside the box. It leads to doctors spending more time trying not to appear wrong than they spend on figuring out the root causes of their patients’ health issues. 

Some physicians hide their fears behind rigid protocols. Instead of simply saying “I don’t know” when a question stumps them, they often brush off patients’ legitimate concerns or fill the silence by ordering additional tests or referrals. 

Quite a few physicians fire patients from their practices if the patients ask too many questions. This is often done illegally, but without the governing bodies taking action or when these governing bodies place the burden on the patient to provide an impossible level of proof, there is no accountability. 

Signs of fear-based medicine include:

• Overtesting and overtreatment: A JAMA survey found that 91% of doctors sometimes order more tests than necessary to protect themselves against lawsuits. Researchers at Harvard estimate that such defensive practices cost the U.S. healthcare system over $50 billion per year. A large source of costs we see is the fall-out from the over-use of lumbar punctures in testing as an invasive procedure, with proper treatment in the form of an epidural blood patch often refused, per patient reports to us and in online forums.
• Dismissal of information: Fearful physicians are often defensive when educated patients walk in with printed research or ask generative artificial intelligence (AI) software like ChatGPT about their symptoms. Instead of engaging with patients, these doctors typically dismiss patient-supplied information as anecdotal or incorrect because they think their authority is being challenged. 
• Avoidance of complexity: Some physicians quietly avoid patients with complicated or unusual problems as they fear dealing with these patients would expose gaps in the physicians’ knowledge, instead of recognizing that curiosity is key and that collaboration over time will likely lead to answers. These physicians might prematurely refer such patients elsewhere or, even worse, misdiagnose and shame them. Other cases in research have included physicians self-reporting setting up accessibility barriers to prevent disabled patients from accessing their offices.  
• Lack of collaboration: Multidisciplinary teamwork typically struggles in fear-based settings. A fearful physician might see bringing in a dietitian as admitting ignorance about nutrition or relinquishing control in a medical system focused on hierarchy and power. So instead of co-managing patients with health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease, where medication combined with dietary guidance can lead to better outcomes, fearful physicians might stick to writing prescriptions and providing generic nutritional advice that doesn’t factor in each patient’s unique biology. Interestingly, an Ecuadorian physician contact shared the Ecuadorian medical guidelines with us, where chronic kidney disease (CKD) was specifically mentioned with recommendations that the primary care physician partner with a dietitian for a food-based approach in the early stages. Unlike the U.S., the Ecuadorian medical guidelines are based on research rather than pharmaceutical or Big Tech influences and are designed for a resource-strained system where, notably, medication side effects, more so than the cost of medications themselves, are seen as having the potential to significantly burden the system. 
• Hostility toward educated patients: Some doctors view patients researching their symptoms as a direct challenge to their authority, while patients are simply looking for a better understanding of their condition. A doctor in fear-based mode might think a patient is wrong to know more than they do or view technology like generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT as threats. In contrast, a Colombian physician contact told us that he loves patients who talk, as this gives him a wealth of information and makes relationship-building an easy process. 

Fear-based medicine doesn’t just hurt patient-doctor trust; it leads to worse outcomes for patients. Physicians can miss out on solutions or clues that would help address a patient’s condition when they avoid uncertainty. 

Instead of curiously troubleshooting for solutions, fear pushes doctors into “protocol mode,” which makes the physicians feel in control, but isn’t always best for patients. The result is an over-fixation on quantitative information rather than qualitative information gathered from patients’ self-reported narratives or old-school visual examinations. This over-fixation inflates patient costs while lowering the quality of care that patients receive. 

The Training Gap: When the US Medical Education System Leaves Doctors Unequipped to Practice Effectively

A big part of the reason so many physicians in the U.S. are fearful is that they didn’t learn everything they needed to in school. The issue is not so much that the budding physicians did not learn every fact known to humankind, but that they are not being taught frameworks for troubleshooting, for learning, and for interactions without fear. 

U.S. medical schools are some of the most prestigious worldwide, but they’re also heavily focused on theoretical knowledge with little practical preparation.  In comparison, medical schools like that in Colombia typically include six years of training with a heavy focus on practical knowledge across specialities ranging from podiatry to dermatology to nephrology and more under the guidance of experienced physicians. Their educational experience as a generalist slowly builds with more and more responsibility placed on the students in their learning journeys. Following graduation, the graduates must then repay their country in a year of public health service, often in a rural area, putting their resourcefulness to the test.

In the U.S., students spend four years in college to earn a prerequisite Bachelor’s degree in any subject for medical school, then four years of medical school, followed by three to seven years of residency in their chosen specialty. Focuses like nutrition or public health aren’t usually prioritized in U.S. medical schools. 

Compare that with the medical education system in many other countries. For example, in Ecuador and Colombia, aspiring physicians can often enter medical school right after high school, and complete six to seven years of generalists training (including a year of social service) to be eligible to practice as generalists without a residency. 

The healthcare education systems in these Latin American countries are built on generalist foundations. Body systems are covered holistically, public health is emphasized from day one, and nutrition is part of the standard curriculum. Doctors in these countries describe their training with pride, as a thorough, interconnected education that prepared them to think systematically. 

Conversely, US students spend a total of approximately eight years between their Bachelor’s program and medical school with very little chance for practical application of medical-related knowledge in a clinical setting. They graduate without the ability nor permission to practice and without a solid foundation of understanding of the human body as a whole; they then are shuffled directly into a specialty if they match into a residency program.. In a residency program, as an example, an endocrinologist might spend years learning every detail about diabetes with a reduced focus on the role of thyroid due to lower pharmaceutical interests there and without learning much about general internal medicine. A cardiologist might become a whiz on the heart without ever fully grasping how metabolism and nutrition impact heart health. 

General topics like nutrition barely get more than a few lectures in many programs out of thousands of training hours. A recent analysis of the curricula of U.S. medical schools revealed that students receive only 19 to 25 hours of nutrition education across all four years of medical school. 

Imagine graduating from a top medical school in the U.S. and still feeling like you have a limited understanding of how the body works. That’s what medical school graduates (MSGs) have noted. This sentiment has emerged as a common theme when we have tasked MSGs with writing essays on their medical school experience after watching patient-led seminars on spinal leaks. 

In fact, a major barrier we faced when recruiting U.S. medical school graduates was that they were terrified to admit that their medical education had been subpar in writing since it could be used against them if their essays became public. With fewer residency spots than MSGs and a bottleneck here, these graduates were scared to speak out. This has been proven as a problem when a U.S. MSG who was open about healthcare gaps posted publicly on X a warning that she received as a direct message that her stance on exposing gaps could impact her ability to match into a residency.

That realization that their medical education is subpar breeds anxiety. How do you diagnose conditions you don’t fully understand? What if a patient asks about a factor you weren’t taught? Will your colleagues or patients think less of you if you admit your ignorance? What do you do if you can’t even vocalize to other graduates or to the public that your medical school program did not teach you enough? 

The knowledge gap that the lack of generalist training in U.S. medical schools creates is the soil in which fear-based medicine grows. Doctors know on some level that no amount of board certifications makes them omniscient. Perhaps this is the reason behind the somewhat obsessive acronym collection shown by some doctors: they are on a quest to paint over the fact that their foundational knowledge is missing and the framework for learning was never built.  

However, the system they trained in rewards them for knowing things (or pretending to know) more than it incentivizes continuous learning. In contrast, a Colombian doctor might respond to an odd case with, “Great, let’s review the physiology together,” because that was ingrained in their schooling to take on a collaborative and curious approach with patients. The response of their U.S. counterpart is often defensive. 

The result is a culture where patients ask simple questions such as “What else could this be?” or “Could diet play a role?” and this is sometimes viewed as doubting the doctor’s expertise. Tests and referrals become the default response to patients who ask “too many” questions or have “problematic” conditions. 

One Ecuadorian general practitioner I interviewed described breaking down cases, looping in a dietitian from the start as risks are weighed step by step. 

Their U.S. equivalent might say, “I’ll send you to endocrinology,” and never bring in a dietitian since U.S. physicians often report believing that they do not think food has an impact on the body in a significant way as they never received this information in their foundational training.

This creates massive care gaps and breeds fear since physicians who are uncertain about the basics dread being exposed. Their fears tell them, “Stick to what you know, and bury the rest.” But medicine needs the opposite approach. 

Additionally, while physicians from many South American countries report to us stories of reporting their colleagues or calling them out publicly for harmful practices, U.S. physicians notably will hide or defend their colleagues’ misdeeds. I have sent copies of public court actions outlining errors leading to patient deaths by Physician B who Physician A attempted to refer me to only for Physician A to say “it’s been 20 years; maybe he’s changed.” 

I have described clearly-wrong procedural techniques by Physician C who made mistakes in my case to Physician D who said: “we all have different ways of practicing medicine.” There is an unspoken rule to never start unraveling the woven piece that obscures the ivory tower as other physicians may start doing the same and all would be exposed to transparency and accountability. 

In comparison, when I tell South American physicians the types of incorrect information or misdeeds I have observed by U.S. physicians, they respond with laughter or shock. When one Colombian heard that my past endocrinologist did not know that iodine impacts the thyroid, he said he would expect a generalist in Colombia to know this, and if an endocrinologist did not know this, he would report them and consider that they had paid their way through a low-tier program to not possess such foundational knowledge. 

Doctors must learn to work across knowledge boundaries to provide the highest level of care available to patients, filling gaps instead of covering them up. Physicians who refuse to adopt this mindset are left with their fear-based habits as their coping mechanism, while patients pay the price. 

Medical Education Systems: US vs. Latin America 

The Culture of Omniscience: When “Fake It Till You Make It” Becomes the Norm

The lack of generalist training in many U.S. medical schools isn’t solely responsible for the fearful mindset many physicians have. The unwritten rule in U.S. medicine is for doctors to always project confidence. This often means faking it until you make it in practice. 

The phrase “I don’t know” can be an ego death if said aloud for those who pride themselves in knowing. For physicians who don’t know and don’t care, they might use apathy to protect themselves emotionally from the harm they incur on patients by lacking the framework to follow up after an “I don’t know.” The ideal phrase would be: “I don’t know, but we will proceed in a structured way to troubleshoot this.” Far too many patients have encountered both physicians who acted out emotionally because of not knowing as well as admitted they didn’t know with a shrug, blamed the patient officially in the notes, and provided no plan for how to move toward the goal of knowing.

The fear of admitting lack of knowledge can lead to strange behavior as trainees see their mentors bluster through rounds, never consulting references on the fly, as if every answer is known. The medical profession often holds itself to a fantasy of infallibility. This also means that the attending physicians almost never model how to troubleshoot a problem when maintaining the pretense that everything is already known. Furthermore, there are far too many cases reported by patients of residents being put in situations with too much responsibility too early without an attending present. In some patient-reported cases, these residents are the worst offenders for cocky behavior and a pretense at knowledge, such as in cases of refusing to admit patients in time to address sepsis early and instead behaving in a combative manner with patients. This further illustrates that the underlying issue in harmful behavior is having too much responsibility paired with too little knowledge. 

Doctors pretending to be experts at everything have a tremendous impact on the care patients receive. Collaboration suffers if admitting doubt or asking a question makes you appear weak or incompetent to your peers. A physician might avoid consulting colleagues or reading up on new findings for fear of appearing incompetent. 

For example, I once shared my detailed thyroid test results with a U.S.-based endocrinologist, and his response was dismissive. “That’s just anecdotal,” he wrote dismissively over email. He showed no curiosity or desire to follow up on the results. Instead, he reflexively dismissed anything that didn’t fit into her existing worldview. 

Firstly, the word “anecdotal” is not appropriate here as quantitative lab data is not a narrative. Secondly, he could have presented the more appropriate argument that this was a small sample size of only n=1, although the data does back up my experience with iodine-based hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism in large public health studies. I have seen this latter argument used commonly by US physicians threatened by my presenting facts that they never learned. “It’s only a case study!” they proclaim, completely overlooking the value of case studies. 

My experience with physicians in Ecuador and Colombia was quite the contrast when I shared my thyroid test results with them. They immediately followed up with questions such as “Which foods were you eating?” or “What research can we review?” They treated it as an intriguing puzzle to solve, not a threat to their credibility as physicians. One Colombian physician specifically said that case studies are small sample sizes but still provide valuable insight. 

The stark difference in attitudes illustrates how ineffective a culture of projecting false certainty can be. Physicians operating on fear see every new idea or unanswered question as a threat to their authority. 

An Example of Real-World Impact

Take another personal interaction I had with physicians in the U.S. I went to an emergency room with symptoms pointing to a potential clotting from malnutrition with petechiae, bruising, heavy bleeding from cuts, and a splinter hemorrhages under my nails. I had to guide the team in asking them to order a complete blood count (CBC), iron levels, and B12 to assess for the most pressing issue first of thrombocytopenia, which I had had in the past. My B12 was low, but my iron levels which I had raised were helping maintain my blood quality and my platelets at about 200,000.

Obviously, there was still an issue, however. The ER doctor did not know how to assess this issue and refused to give me a blood clotting disorder diagnosis as she would have to work from there and clearly did not know how to. I sat in the bed, the sheets stained with my blood which had smeared everywhere after the draw due to slow clotting. I used ChatGPT to troubleshoot and realized I hadn’t eaten much Vitamin K in the past month. I showed the nurse my petechiae from under the cuff and asked if any clotting tests had been run. They had not. I had shown up to the ER with clotting issues, and they had not run a clotting test. I asked the ER staff to run clotting tests and then we had to wait again for Round 2 of my blood being drawn.

My clotting tests showed an abnormality, but the ER doctor refused to investigate further and refused to prick my finger to visually examine my blood, which I had described as “like water” to have plausible deniability that she never saw this. She simply quoted me as saying that my blood was “like water” and then diagnosed me with health anxiety as well as made a note that I was poorly managing my hyperthyroidism and not taking my health seriously. In fact, I had been managing my hyperthyroidism with my primary care physician through gradual iodine reduction and was recovering at a rapid rate that has astounded physicians. The issue with the ER doctor? She never asked me what my baseline numbers were for my hyperthyroidism. She labeled my recovery as slow based on bias and perhaps subconsciously an intent to label me as an unreliable narrator. She did give me referrals to a hematologist in the hospital system.

I returned home and increased my Vitamin K intake, and the surface tension returned to my blood within 48 hours. I scheduled a follow-up with my PCP and a follow-up clotting cascade. All were normal after three weeks of increasing my Vitamin K, and my other symptoms such as the bloody striations under my fingernails healed and disappeared.  

For the situation in the ER, rather than admit, “we don’t know what’s causing the clotting issues, and we don’t know how to figure that out,” the ER physician focused on a diagnosis and a description of me that was not relevant because admitting “I don’t know” and “this patient knows more than I do” was too risky. More specifically, “I don’t know” is risky because she would then have to troubleshoot and provide a differential diagnosis, and it became apparent that she did not know how to complete this. 

Yet, studies show that patients appreciate honesty over blank assertions. Trust goes up when doctors say, “I’m not sure, but let’s work together to figure it out.” Unfortunately, that rarely happens in a culture that shames uncertainty. 

The U.S. system even teaches doctors to cover up uncertainty with paperwork. Ever notice how ER or clinic notes often use quotes around patient complaints? Phrases like “patient reports X” instead of stating a symptom as fact are a coded way for doctors to distance themselves. It says: “I’m just writing what they said, not that I really believe it.” These physicians further distance themselves by painting the patient as an unreliable narrator. If the notes show that the patient is stating things and that the patient is an unreliable narrator, then all can be ignored. 

Documentation becomes a shield when the stigma of being wrong is so high. It’s a perverse incentive structure where being curious is riskier than hiding behind double quotes. 

The reality is that fake omniscience hurts everyone. Those who project an image of always already knowing will never have to travel the path of troubleshooting to move from not knowing to knowing in a high-stakes environment. Doctors who always feel pressure to act like all-knowing experts end up isolating themselves from learning. They are often reluctant to admit when guidelines are outdated or take patient concerns seriously. 

Courage will be required to break this culture. Real confidence in medicine starts with acknowledging limits. It means being able to admit you don’t know things in public and a willingness to do the work to learn. Physicians should be more concerned with being wrong than appearing not to know something. Furthermore, lack of confidence is not solely the responsibility of the physicians. Their medical education in the US failed them without the gradual introduction of more and more practical application of knowledge, with the scaffolding being slowly removed, and without the use of specific educational techniques like confidence training.  

When Educated Patients Feel Like Threats

Ironically, one of the factors that has increased the practice of fear-based medicine in recent decades is the emergence of the information age. Patients trusted that doctors knew best in the olden days, since people who weren’t part of the medical field rarely had access to the latest journal articles or medical textbooks. 

A doctor’s word was often final back then, but doctors were also trained differently. As someone with an uncle who was trained as an anesthesiologist but practices now as a general practitioner, I am aware of how he was able to progress through medical school at a time in the U.S. when financial support from a single mother was sufficient and medical schools had a more practical, generalist focus. 

Medical training in the 1970s in the U.S. was built around the philosophy that every doctor should first be a broadly trained physician, and this, unfortunately, was lost in more recent decades as the quality of physician-patient interaction and a generalist-first focus in our system degraded. 

However, in the modern age, thanks to the internet and AI, patients are exiting the other side of this degradation curve of medicine. As one Colombian physician told me when I explained the situation to him of the past harm in a non-collaborative, non-relational system: “ChatGPT is the great equalizer.” Patients can look up their symptoms, lab results, and related research studies before and after consulting with a physician. Many patients now show up at appointments with research in hand or a summary of their case created with generative AI. They also bring ChatGPT on a mobile device with them to double-check in real time what the doctor is saying. 

Patients who are empowered with information are a valuable asset for confident, well-trained physicians since knowledgeable patients can actually help solve problems, but a terrifying phenomenon for doctors who are insecure about how knowledgeable the patients can be with AI making information easily accessible. 

Some physicians openly admit to feeling uncomfortable when patients pull out medical studies, while others report feeling undermined when patients arrive with information printed off the internet. Even more physicians on social media report a common trend that the patients will ask the physician a question as a test, unbeknownst to the physician, fact-check the physician’s answer with ChatGPT, and then tell the physician whether they trust them or not based on whether ChatGPT says the physicians are correct and would like to begin care. The physicians often report feeling miffed, but the patients are engaging in due diligence of trust but verify. These patients are also demonstrating that they believe ChatGPT to be more accurate and less biased. 

One survey showed that many physicians tend to ignore or even contradict information that a savvy patient presents, simply because it challenges the traditional authority hierarchy. Some doctors will change the subject, dismiss the info as misinformation, or resort to jargon that the patient can’t follow. Others will attempt to listen patiently, but the fact that they felt a surge of tension speaks volumes on its own. Still others will dismiss patients illegally from the practice simply for asking questions. This was such an issue for autistic patients that one autistic healthcare CEO in the US, Katya Siddall-Cipolla, created her own virtual primary care startup for neurodivergent patients.

The tension between physicians and their patients has only grown with ChatGPT and AI. Informal polls show that many doctors are terrified of patients fact-checking them with AI during consultations, while others admit to using AI themselves when talking to patients to avoid looking out of touch.

Meanwhile, educated patients are usually just looking to collaborate with their physicians. They come to appointments armed with the latest research, but trust their doctors to help them interpret it. Most patients say a doctor’s willingness to listen and ability to troubleshoot to solve a problem is more important than their knowing the answer to every question off the top of their head. A physician who says, “That’s a great point, let’s look at it together,” builds trust with patients, while those who snap at patients for asking questions destroy trust. 

Doctors viewing educated patients as “the enemy” has a profound impact on patient outcomes. Patients tend to stop asking questions when they sense their doctor is defensive and might seek a second opinion or refuse care. 

Why Courage-Based Medicine Is the Only Sustainable Solution

When healthcare professionals ask, “Why is courage important in medicine?”, the answer is that courage is the antidote to fear. Courageous doctors admit their limits and view questions as opportunities to learn with patients, not threats. 

Instead of pretending to have the answer to every question, courageous doctors acknowledge the limits of their expertise. 

Courage-based medicine involves prioritizing:

• Curiosity
• Humility
• Partnerships with patients
• A willingness to admit uncertainty
• Asking better questions
• Resisting snap assumptions
• Protecting your clinical judgment from system pressures
• Leading with psychological safety
• Co-investigating symptoms
• Integrating valid patient information
• Acknowledging when more information is needed
• Reducing unnecessary testing done out of fear
• Protecting time, trust, and clinical identity

Courage-based medicine isn’t: 

• Ignoring evidence
• Giving patients no option but to self-diagnose
• Pretending to know everything
• Acting fearless

The Path Forward: Building a Culture of Courage and Collaboration

Addressing fear-based medicine and its negative impact on patient outcomes requires changing the habits the profession teaches. Some steps that doctors can take to ensure they’re not allowing fear to impact their decision-making include:

• Embrace learning: Doctors should actively seek out knowledge to fill training gaps. That might mean taking Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses on nutrition or endocrine physiology that med school never covered. It might mean partnering with dietitians as colleagues. The U.S. is slowly moving this way. 
• Collaborate with peers: Work with healthcare professionals who specialize in different areas to improve patient outcomes. For example, a dietitian could audit a patient’s iodine intake while the doctor focuses on medication. 
• Teach and role-model transparency: Experienced doctors and educators should model admitting uncertainty. Attending physicians can start rounds by pointing out something they recently learned from research or by discussing a rare case they struggled to diagnose. Residency programs could include sessions on medical humility and how to communicate it. Simple phrases like “We’re not sure, let’s order this test just to be safe” should be normalized. Additionally, the goal should always be to troubleshoot to arrive at a solution. As one U.S. patient visiting Colombia said, “Colombian doctors are different because they always leave the patients with a solution.” 
• Look to other systems: The U.S. isn’t the only healthcare model around, and countries that train doctors as generalists, such as Colombia, are more likely to produce physicians who are used to admitting the limits of their expertise. We can import ideas from these systems. 
• Address financial disincentives: The current fee-for-service system in the U.S. sometimes rewards the absence of solutions. Doctors recommending unnecessary procedures that patients don’t need typically earn more money, while solving a health issue with dietary recommendations cuts down revenue. Advocates for healthcare reform argue that payment models should incentivize improved patient outcomes. 
• Take advantage of educational resources: Use the many tools that are aimed at addressing care gaps in the healthcare industry. For example, we offer an evidence-based course, Are You Consuming Too Much Iodine? Excess Intake & Thyroid Disorders for physicians and patients who want a better understanding of how iodine impacts thyroid health, an area that is often under-discussed. 

The Importance of the Empowered Patient

Patients also have a role in promoting courage-based medicine. Patients should continue educating themselves, but understand that there could be nuances that AI algorithms and search engines miss. 

Good doctors welcome knowledgeable patients and are willing to collaborate with them to ensure optimal outcomes. Get a second opinion or find a provider who encourages open dialogue if you run into defensive or dismissive doctors. 

Join the Movement Toward Courage-Based Care

The U.S. healthcare system won’t get any better until we tackle fear head-on. Physicians who are frozen by fear won’t take action to listen to patients or read up on the latest studies. Instead, they’ll stick to outdated protocols while their patients suffer. 

Physicians who are willing to say “let’s explore potential root causes and then see what has or has not worked and use the scientific method to work toward a solution” deliver better care and earn more trust. The doctors who quietly admit their limits and collaborate (often learned from other healthcare systems) are the ones leading the way.

Real expertise means knowing the boundaries of your knowledge. Real confidence means being willing to say, “I don’t know yet, but we will figure this out together.” Patients are dying because doctors are too afraid to admit when they aren’t sure about things. It’s time we change that. 

Be brave. Stay curious. And let’s fix the healthcare system by practicing courage-based medicine. Sign up for our Momentum Membership Community to join our movement and subscribe to our newsletter for updates.