Doctors group pushes for physicians to stop doing unnecessary tests

When Denice Klavano's young son became ill, like anyparentshe took him to the doctor, and came home with a prescription.

"I didn't think to ask any questions. I just provided my child with the medicine as directed," she said.

Shortly after starting the medication, her son developed a hand tremor. It wasn't until laterKlavanofound out that was a side effect of the drug.

Two decades later, her son still has it.

"We returned to the doctor who said, 'Oh, well,we can discontinue it. I didn't think he really needed it anyway,'" saidKlavano, who is nowan advocate for patient safety.

"I think I was of that generation,I was a young mom. The doctor says to do this, and so you do it. I didn't think to question. I wish I had."

Campaign says 30%of tests unnecessary

It's these kinds of situations a new national program called "Choosing Wisely" is trying to prevent.

The national campaign, which launched in Nova Scotia on Thursday, asks doctors, patients, and others in the healthcare field to think twice about over-prescribing and running unneeded tests.

According to a report done with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, up to 30 per cent of the tests, treatments, or proceduresprescribed in Canada are unnecessary.

"That's a lot of testing, a lot of worrying, and a lot of time that's spent on these tests unnecessarily,"said emergency room doctor and Choosing Wisely Nova Scotia co-chair Connie LeBlanc.

Whether it's medication, X-rays, blood work, biopsies or other procedures, the treatment canexpose patients to side effects, radiation, or lead to other infections.

Extra testing affecting wait times

They can alsolead to false positives, causing unnecessary stress.

"We're not looking to not do any tests. What we're looking to do is do tests for the narrowwindow of people who will benefit. Will we miss things?" LeBlancsaid.

"We'll miss things whether we test or not. But when we apply tests randomly, the false positive rate goes way up."

Extra testing also increases wait times, meaning people who really need them done will have to wait longer.

"Physicians practicing today, we were trained in a system where it was embarrassing to miss anything. So doing a whole lot of testing, there was never significant attention given to the downside of testing. Now we know it's not a good idea for patients, and not a good idea for us," she said.

Checking testing off the list

LeBlanc says the most common unnecessary treatments are prescribing antibiotics for viral infections, ordering X-rays for lower back pain, and doingroutine blood tests for people who are perfectly fine.

She said all physicians have prescribed them at one point or another.

"I think we feel that patients want them," Leblanc said. "Sometimes patients feel valued when they get more testing.... A lot of our test ordering I think is emotional."