At least half the time you visit you doctor, you aren’t able to describe your medical diagnoses or the risk factors for disease after visiting the doctor. That is what the research says. In one study doctors were asked to list the health problems that they talked about with their patients on a recent visit. Patients were asked what they thought were their most important health problems.

Patients did not report 54 percent of the health problems doctors considered very important including 62 percent of cardiovascular risk.

Getting the most out of your visit to the doctor is important to your health. That means you need to communicate well with your doctors and understand what they’re saying. I do admit to sometimes feeling like an absolute idiot because if I don’t understand something medical about my condition I will ask over and over until I do understand. I am fortunate. My primary care  physician will make sure I understand everything he’s reporting and if he doesn’t have time at the office to explain it to me he will call me up at home in the evening. That is good communication.

Each of you deserve the same good communication. The first step to interacting with your physician begins when you voice a concern about your health. The doctor takes a personal history, gives you an exam, takes necessary tests and reports her findings and recommendations for treatment. This is the point where patient and doctor often disconnect. For instance, the patient may not agree with the doctor that the diagnosis is important especially if the condition isn’t causing any symptoms.

Patients also listen selectively. If they come to the office worried about one problem and the doctor finds another the patient may only focus on the original problem. Or if the doctor’s findings are serious, denial may kick in at first and the patient may not remember any details of the diagnosis.

By the same token, doctors may not communicating as well as they think they are or they use so much medical babble in their message that you need to be a doctor to understand what they’re saying.

Here are some steps you can take to change the odds and better understand what your physician is telling you about your health.

• Write down your concerns, known medical problems and all medications before the visit.

• Take someone with you to act as a second set of ears.

• Summarize at the end of the visit what you think is important and what you think the doctor said to you.

• Tell the doctor if you don’t understand a term, explanation or therapy.

• Ask your doctor to write down, for you, your medical problems, risk factors for disease, and proposed treatments.

Your doctor may have other people in the office help you get the answers, but that’s okay. You will still have a far better understanding about your diagnosis.

To your successful aging.

Ruthan brodsky

I started to evaluate just how good our physician is when we started discussing changing health insurance coverage to reduce costs. I knew I would need to select another physician for a new plan and was evaluating the pros and cons which included who would be my physician. Read the rest of this entry