Dr. Vince Leone argues doctors should ask patients to imagine their life in three years if nothing changes, then build treatment around what they've lost. Ask what gardening or family time means to them. Make the stakes real and personal.
They are diagnosing and recommending care. And so sometimes you need to dig a little bit, like Dr. Pankinen said, and ask some hard questions. Well, I don't know if I want to do this. Have you thought about what life would look like in 3 years if you don't address this? What happens? What happens if you don't do anything about this? That being said, we're here right now, right? I know your case intimately. What Questions, or what are you not clear about so that we can address this now? Right. Sometimes, you know, I always feel like in the relationship between patient and doctor, the doctor needs to be the alpha. And what I mean by that is not dominant. It's just they need to lead the relationship. They need to be the leader in, you know, what's going to happen with your relationship with your grandchildren or your husband. Uh, will you be able to garden anymore? Uh, now we're talking about things that should have been discussed in the consultation, like what has this condition taken away from them? Um, you know, commonly called like a trigger, because that's, you know, everyone wants to obviously get out of pain, but the reason why they want to get out of pain is usually because they want to get back to doing something that was taken away from them. So that should be pulled up in the consultation, right? Yeah.
