Has your appetite increased or decreased? Are you having trouble sleeping? Do you have any pains? How's your mood? Your sex drive? Are you feeling unusually tired? That's why Permut prefers to take a patient's medical history himself. You know better than anyone else how you feel, and that information is vital to your doctor. "You know the doctor is going to look at that before seeing you," says Wurzbacher. Once you've written it all down, make a copy and give it to the nurse when you arrive for your doctor visit. Write down all of your medical problems, and also the names and the dosages of the medications you're taking. Explain that it all began with belly pain, and then you developed diarrhea, and so on." "You may think you can remember everything," says Wurzbacher, "but by the time you get to see the doctor you will have forgotten the majority of what you wanted to tell the doctor, and it's important for the doctor to know the progression of the problem. "Keep a symptom diary," advises Terrie Wurzbacher, MD, a Navy physician for more than three decades and author of a book titled Your Doctor Said What? Exposing the Communication Gap. Prepare for your doctor visit in advance.Ī recent review of 33 studies showed that patients who filled out a detailed checklist before an office visit, or received in-office coaching that focused on their health status, asked more questions during their doctor visit and got more satisfaction from the visit. So if you want to help your doctor help you, you need to help your doctor. Permut prefers to have patients get involved in their own care and engage the doctor in a cooperative effort to determine the best course of action. "They want you to make all their decisions for them." "Some patients have the attitude, 'I'm putting myself in the hands of a professional,'" says Stephen Permut, MD, chairman of family and community medicine at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. That famous line from the film Jerry Maguire may be the best advice a doctor could give his or her patient.
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