Posted by Daniel (196.2.44.154) on January 18, 2001 at 07:49:25:
In Reply to: No and yes I have an opinion. posted by BobG on January 18, 2001 at 07:03:18:
I'll try to answer all your questions as best I can, but they're very good questions and will not all be easy to answer.
There are only two specialists at the Headache Clinic. The First is a Neurologist. This is for two reasons. The first is that before we can treat you at the Headache Clinic we have to ensure that you do not have an underlying neurological cause like a tumour or concussion or something else that a neurologist needs to deal with. This is the only function that the neurologist plays at the Headache Clinic.
The second specialist is my father. He is Maxillo Facial Surgeon by profession which means that he is also a qualified dentist. He then studied medicine too and so is also a qualified doctor.
The rest are support staff or offiliates of the clinic that only come in when neccessary, depending from patient to patient.
The most difficult question you ask is why we have no medical explanations on the site. The reason is the very reason for my reluctance to get into medical discussions that I mentioned to Bob P when he first replied. As soon as you present an opinion there are fourty others ready to shoot it down and move on. The best way we've found to convince people is not to start an argument with them, they've genarally suffered long and hard and read deep and wide.
This is changing to some extent though, we designed the web-site ourselves but now we've got some professionals to redo it and they've said to put the exlanations in, in pictoral format, so have look in about two moths, the site should be different. At the same time, any suggestions to make it more convincing.... please don't hold back, we need all the help we can get
The Quality of life questionnaire was designed by an American organization, the name of which I'm not familiar. I agree with you that you could substitute 'pink eye' for headacahe and get the same result, but its used mainly in a corporate context for displaying to the human resource function the cost of headaches to their business. Its a good marketing tool for us in that way and we put it on the site because it has international recognition and we thaught some people might be interested.
Also I'm sure you know the importance of data base building in a business like this, and it seemed like something we could give in return for an e-mail adress. Perhaps you're right though, I've not checked how many poeple actually fill it out , or whether the results are appreciated.
Also lastly, if there was a way of convincing you that we're not a scam, I'd do it if i could think of it. I'm sorry.
Daniel