I have family members that got almost killed by bad doctors several times, but the doctors did eventually succeed with a few of them.
In one case my grandmother with dementia probably fell down the stairs, and her brain was bleeding. Local hospital was clueless, so my parents drove 1h to an other hospital that immediately diagnosed the issue and scheduled the surgery. A few minutes later they overheard the surgeon getting yelled at for wasting money on an elderly woman (French universal healthcare). Surgery was successful, and she lived several more years until unrelated issues killed her. That story is too long but also caused by poor medical practices.
Also in France, my dad suffered from massive headaches. The local hospital put him in cardiology because they lacked room in neurology. It took days before a doctor bothered to come see him, nurses not being helpful. They could not find anything wrong. Eventually we brought an external Dr and in 5 minutes he diagnosed a non fatal meningitis, easily treatable with antibiotics. The hospital doctors confirmed with a spinal tap. They decided they should do more spinal taps twice daily. My dad took the pills and GTFO. He went back 30y later for an other issue, and left him sitting in the hallway all day long without seeing anyone, a few days later they decided he needed treatment but it was too late and he never recovered.
Personally I suffered from similar symptoms to Chron's disease. I had my wife drive me to the ER a few times after work with me crying in pain. The nurse assumed I wanted opioids, while I wanted to get diagnosed. The ER folks did not really help. I was later diagnosed through an endoscopy, my small intestine was indeed inflamed. It turns out I was somehow allergic to the posh greens served at the Google cafeteria.
If you grew up in the US you will probably remember that most Dr were promoting DARE, which has been debunked as a scam to defraud money (look it up). The food pyramid has also been debunked as made up pseudoscience. in the 1990s margarine would protect your heart, while butter would give you heart attacks; debunked.
From what I have witnessed, Drs are only guesstimating a lot of things, yet they behave as if they are sure of things. A lot of them have a hard time thinking outside the box, and we need to do our own research and advocate for proper diagnosis, even if the Drs do not like it.
