I prefer the first kind of foreshadowing because it's entirely up to me, rather than the second kind which means not only could all these things be wrong, but there's this person who probably has a position of responsibility for fixing whatever is wrong, who has been thinking that it's one particular problem and now if/when it turns out to be a different problem I not only have to do all the stuff to deal with the problem but I have to work on disillusioning this important yet probably moronic person of the preconceived idea they have that it's a different problem but won't yet tell me the full story. This is especially true with doctors where (a) they are the gatekeeper to ways of not dying, (b) they have the power to traumatise me for the rest of my life, (c) they usually have a whole lot of other information that they're not telling the patient because they decide you're stupid, (d) they passed medical school through being good at rote learning and therefore probably don't actually know how anything works or have the capacity to assimilate new information and figure out what it means, (e) they can and will prescribe drugs that make you too dizzy to make decisions properly, before they tell you the important information that you need to think about.

The best way to receive bad news is from a computer where you have access to all the relevant information and something to break. People somehow seem to be remeber to get offended by swear words in the most ridiculous circumstances.

(Before any men point out that I am being a hypocrite by assuming most doctors aren't good at working things out yet object to doctors thinking I'm stupid:
1) It's my body and I'm the one who is helpless to fix it; their foolishness is more damaging than mine.
2) Doctors usually are a bit stupider than me but more intelligent than most of their patients.
3) They are relying on a bunch of notes in which any mistakes or inconvenient pieces of information* have been cunningly omitted by the person who heard them, I know what actually happened.)

Also: I have Mondayitis, please excuse my non-obvious partial exaggeration and spelling mistakes.)

I can see where you're coming from, but while some people don't want to hear everything, some of us really really do - and it's the information medical staff rarely seem to think is important that in the short term we really want to know, like "in a few hours, we want to do this routine procedure, in which the following things happen" and "when you wake up, there will be this kind of dressing, which will be removed in ... hours, which will hurt, so if you are going to stop taking opiates, after that is the best time". These are the things that differentiate patient from piece of uniformly consenting meat. I appreciate most of your patients are in extreme life or death situations and various states of consciousness; my perspective is from being awake and terrified by a sudden barrage of assailants who could consult me about what they're doing but chose to pretend my mind was not really there. Also, I would like to be the judge of my emotional strength, rather than somebody who has known me for two hours.

I do regret coming on so strong with the "doctors are stupid" angle, I'm sorry, that was unfair. I have met some doctors who listen and think and are great, and some who seem to just follow an algorithm of what step comes next even when presented with some really important information.

I was under the impression you were in ICU all the time! Oops.

I meant in a non-emergency scenario where the person actively asks the system for the information in a background of their own choosing, for example finding out your ancestors were slave traders in some kind of genealogy search. In an emergency situation where the status of the person and their support network is changing quickly and they are in a place they didn't choose to be, they need somebody like you. I should really have made the context I was thinking of clearer, sorry.