EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION WITH HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

Making The Most Of Our Health Care Contacts

 

  female health care provider writing a prescription                                                   female health care provider holding a chart                                                                                                     

1.  Expect explanations about your own health care issues.

  • Insist on clear and understandable explanations from your health care providers.

2.  Ask for clarification if terms are used that you do not understand.

  • Stop the health care provider and ask that the information be repeated in terms that you can understand.  It is your right to received understandable explanations.

3.  Ask for an explanation of why your concerns are unimportant.

  • If your health care provider believes the new disturbing symptom that you have just reported is not something to worry about, ask why.

4.  Convey to your health care provider that you know your body better than anyone else.

  • You have lived with your illness or disability more closely than anyone. Get to know your body and speak up if someone implies that you do not.

5.  If seeing a health care provider for the first time, ask about accessibility of the facility.

  • Finding out after you get there that it is not accessible does not make for effective communication.

6.  Prepare for your office visit. clock, book, calendar

  • Make a list of your priorities before you see your health care provider.
  • Take a written list with you and make sure that your health care provider does not get away before you get you discuss the issues.
  • Put the list in front of you during the visit and if a family member accompanies you to the visit, give the family member a copy. Having a list of questions will not be interpreted by health care providers as an indication of lack of trust on your part. Rather, it conveys the message that you have considered ahead of time the issues that you think are important and want to discuss.

7.  Practice ahead of time to make sure you get your questions addressed.

  • Ask a family member or friend to accompany you on your visit and ask that person to write down your health care provider’s responses to your questions and any recommendations and instructions that are given. It is all too easy to forget what instructions your health care provider has given to you, when you are not at your best, are bothered by new symptoms, are depressed or anxious.

8.  Ask your health care provider to sit at your eye level.

  • Talking at eye level increases the effectiveness of the visit.

9.  Take advantage of the availability of other health care providers who work with your health care provider if you are having some difficulty communicating with your health care provider.

  • For example, if you do not understand why you are having symptoms even though you are taking medications that are supposed to prevent or reduce symptoms, talk this over with the nurses in the office. They often are very knowledgeable about the issue, have the information you need and may have a bit more time to spend with you. The nurse may be able to help you sort out various issues and serve as an intermediary to communicate your most important concerns to the physician. Consider the nurse as a valuable resource and use her or him accordingly.

10.  Educate yourself about health promotion and disease prevention strategies that are important for your age group.

  • Health promotion and disease prevention strategies are important for each and every one of us, whether we have a disability or not.
  • A disability does not protect you from heart disease, cancer, respiratory problems, and other health problems that may result in part from unhealthy lifestyles. However, these issues are often not at the top of list of priorities of the neurologist we see for treatment of the disability.
  • It is important to keep track of the date of our last Pap smear, bone density test, mammogram or exam for an enlarged prostate. It is important to have such exams and screening as recommended, because most people with disabilities have a normal or near-normal life span.

11. Become an advocate for yourself and others. Learn as much about your disabling condition as you can. This will:

  • put you in a position of knowing what likely is and what is not part of the picture of the disabling condition,
  • reduce the chance that you and your health care providers will attribute all health problems to the disability, and
  • enable you to obtain health care from others---internist, women’s health care providers, for example---if the problem is NOT related to the disability.

12.  Follow the advice of Hubie Blake and other seniors and take of yourself as though you are going to live to be 100.

 "If I had known I was going to live this long,
I would have taken better care of my self."


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07/31/2003 11:38 AM