Here are articles from our Prepared Patient feature series about communicating with your doctor or clinician. These articles are based on interviews with experts and people around the country about their experiences talking to their doctors, emailing their physician's team, and discussing their treatment plans with their clinicians.

In the right column, Prepared Patient 411 offers online, phone and community resources to assist you. And in Related Research, we share the most current scientific research in brief news stories.

We invite you to share your own experiences communicating with your doctors and their medical teams. You can post a reply to any of our featured articles, blogs and news stories.

Cutting Through ICU Confusion In January 2010, after beginning treatment for chronic Lyme disease, 53-year-old Jim Young lost significant weight and struggled to breathe. Doctors admitted him to a private room in the hospital, but within 15 hours, his wife Erica Kosal received a call about his imminent transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU). The first time seeing him in the ICU came as a shock to Kosal, 42, a college professor. "I can remember he was hooked up to all kind of machines. He looked so deflated. He was out of it and really sleepy and confused. He didn't look like the same person and I wasn't prepared for that," Kosal said. Every year more than 5 million people in the United States spend time in intensive care units for acute injuries or life-threatening illnesses. For patients, family members and friends, the ICU experience is often emotional and confusing. READ MORE
Making a Pact With Your Doctors Jeff Gavin's diagnosis of leukemia last year threw him into a new world. Suddenly the father of five had to keep track of a bevy of new medicines and maintain a complicated series of appointments and hospital visits for chemotherapy. Now, Gavin and his oncologist have worked out a treatment plan that helps both of them stay on top of it all. "It's been a huge change from when we started," Gavin said. "But I can't [afford to] have a bad day. We have the plan in front of us, and we will tweak it as we go along." READ MORE
Talking About Symptoms With Your Health Care Team What brings you in here today? It's a simple question that's at the heart of many patient-doctor conversations, but it's not a question to take lightly. Discussing your symptoms with a doctor, nurse, nurse practitioner or physician's assistant can be one of the most important tasks you perform as a patient, putting you on the right road to treatment and recovery or sending you down a blind alley of confusion and misdiagnosis. READ MORE
Talking About Medical Tests With Your Health Care Team Whether you're healthy or ill, there are a variety of medical tests your health care team might recommend for you. A yearly checkup often includes routine tests such as blood sugar and cholesterol levels, vision and hearing assessments, tests for heart functioning and others used to monitor a chronic condition—such as a lung function test for those with asthma. You may also be tested to diagnosis or confirm the presence of a disease, or to see how well a particular treatment or medication is working. READ MORE
Monitoring Your Child's Development: Your Pediatrician Can Help When all is well with physical health, often it is a child's behavior that prompts parents to the visit their pediatrician who may rule out — or uncover — developmental problems. Tantrums at bedtime, delayed speech, socially crippling shyness, toilet training and finicky eating — when these everyday concerns become overwhelming parents expect their child's doctor to have solutions, says Joanna Bogin, a program supervisor for the Children's Trust Fund in Connecticut, a state agency that promotes health and safety. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians screen for developmental delays when a child is 9, 18 and 30 months old. READ MORE
Effective Patienthood Begins with Good Communication Given all the obstacles that prevent us from getting to the doctor's office — scheduling an appointment, digging out the insurance card and plain old procrastination — it is good health sense to make the most of your time when you are finally face-to-face with your health care provider. Easier said than done, says health researcher Sherrie Kaplan. READ MORE

 

Share |