Re: Communicating with Your Doctor...BE SURE TO READ THIS!!

From: cathy:- (anonymous@medispecialty.com)
Fri Dec 7 14:02:09 2001


This is great, but I want to add something. I've had a bunch of different doctors over the years because I've moved. In that time I found 1 outstanding doctor and 1 excellent doctor and the rest, well, not great. I've decided after lots of thought that there is ONE thing that distinguishes that one outstanding doctor from all of the rest.

A great doctor ASKS QUESTIONS. And listens to your answers, and thinks about what they the answers mean, and asks MORE questions. And those questions make sense according to what you have told him/her. We've all seen thousands of hours of police dramas and detective stories on TV and movies. A great doctor grills you for information like a great detective grills witnesses for information about a crime.

I don't know how many of those articles I've read in woman's magazines and parenting magazines and pregnancy books that have some simpering testimonal to the prototypical doctor, whom I will name "Dr. Orick L. Dephi." "Oh he's so WONDERFUL! He takes the time to answer all of my questions!" I just want to reach in through the pages of the magazine and grab the woman by the neck and yell, "Look, you little twit, if you have a question go to the library! When you go to the doctor it's so that s/he can figure out what, if anything, is wrong with YOUR body! Not a meeting where you chose a subject and the overbearing pompous SOB pontificates upon it!"

Even this article, which overall was excellent, fell a little bit into The Trap:

>Write down all your symptoms and questions, all medications you're
>currently taking (including supplements), and gather together all
>recent medical records and lab results.
>
>IN THE WAITING ROOM...As you wait for your appointment, go over your
>questions and your objective instead of reading a magazine. That way,
>you'll be focused when the doctor is ready to see you.

No, there is something more important than "questions" and "your objective." In any doctor-patient relationship the patient has a lot of information about the patient's body that no one else has. THE most important part of any doctor-patient communication is to transfer that important information from the patient to the doctor. If your doctor does not enthusiastically PURSUE that information, then you are not looking at a great doctor.

After 2 fairly traumatic pregnancies and one horrific and one good-but-grueling childbirth experience, I have often sarcastically said the the fundamental principle of modern obstetrical practice is the principle that NOTHING which either parent knows or feels could possibly be of the slightest value or even interest to the doctor. (This starts with the inaccurate due date because it is irrelevant that mom & dad know when they had sex and when they didn't, and then goes downhill from there.) Now as I get older and see different kinds of doctors I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't the bedrock principle of ALL modern medicine! :-(

When I was pregnant with #1 I would go in for an OB appointment. No matter which of the 4 doctors, they would say 2 things: #1: "You gained too much weight." (I gained 33lb during the entire pregnancy, which is within the "ideal" range of 25-35lb.) And #2 "Do you have any questions?" Well, as I'm sure all of you grammerians will notice, none of the following sentences is a question.

1) I burn myself with matches to punish myself for eating. But I keep stuffing my face anyway.

2) Every time I go to the bathroom and wipe I'm bleeding.

3) My hemmorhoids hurt so bad I've considered ending it all.

4) Almost every afternoon I lean over the toilet and stick my finger down my throat, but nothing comes out because I'm only really crazy enough to do the bulemia schtick if my stomach is empty. Then I lie on the floor curled up in a ball and cry for hours.

5) When I walk, at totally random intervals, but averaging about one step out of ten, as I step down my left hip socket is exruciatingly painful.

6) Several times a day I have to sit down suddenly to avoid passing out.

>From what I can tell this is pretty much the norm for prenatal care, at
least in the US. Patients are not ALLOWED to tell their doctors what is going on with their pregnancies. The prenatal appointments are scheduled for 4 minutes long, so there is no time for all that. All these women who get hospitalized for preterm labor -- I've always wondered just how they managed to work the fact that they were having contractions into their "questions."

I once read a comment from a frustrated doctor that went something like, "Doctors today are terrified to ask their patients 'how are you?' for fear that the patient might actually answer."

--
cathy :-)

Enter keywords:
Returns per screen: Require all keywords: