5 ways to help your doctor help you
Apr. 7, 2008 by Lisa Currie
Being a knowledgeable consumer when it comes to your own health care, especially post-graduation, can make all the difference in ensuring your health needs are being met. This article from CNN.com offers suggestions for helping your doctor help you.
Dr. Adam Dimitrov doesn’t play favorites with patients. But he does have a few favorite patients — ones who make it easy for him to do his job well.
Bring details about treatment you’re getting from other health professionals to every appointment.
Take one of his patients who had a liver transplant. Dimitrov is her internist, and she arrives at every visit with a folder. Inside is a list of the medications she’s taking, copies of letters from her other doctors and results of her latest imaging studies and lab tests.
This way, Dimitrov isn’t searching through her chart for papers that might — or very well might not — be there.
“She makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks,” he said. This way, he can use their time together to take better care of her.
Now, wait a minute. Shouldn’t a doctor have everything — reports from other physicians, lab test results — right there? Why is it the patient’s responsibility to bring them in?
It’s true: In an ideal world, a doctor would have your health history, the medications you’re taking and lab results right in front of him. But we live in reality, and the reality is that these things are often lost in a mound of paperwork. So here are five things you can do to help your doctor help you: