In this Doctor Pro Tips segment, the host offers practical guidance for patients to improve interactions with their healthcare providers. The core premise is to start each visit assuming the doctor is doing their best within the limits of the practice environment. The host then outlines concrete steps: (1) be prepared by compiling a brief, up‑to‑date list of recent health changes, medications, ER visits, allergies, and specialist input; (2) clearly communicate multiple concerns, framing them as a prioritized set so the clinician can address the most urgent items first and schedule follow‑ups for others; (3) take notes during the appointment, ask permission to record if needed, and review any walk‑out summary sheets for accuracy; (4) consider bringing a trusted friend or family member to act as a scribe and emotional support, especially for complex, chronic, or newly diagnosed conditions such as cancer; and (5) proactively discuss any medications that may no longer be needed or that were prescribed elsewhere. The segment emphasizes that a little planning and respectful collaboration can make appointments more efficient and reduce frustration, especially in the post‑COVID telemedicine era. The host concludes with a reminder to share and subscribe to the channel.
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Welcome back to Medicine Health. We're in the Doctor Pro Tips section here. Our next discussion is going to be dealing with your doctor. That sounds like an interesting pro tip. But just like we talked about, you know, dealing with, you know, managing pills and new prescriptions or recommendations for supplements or whatever it is that you're doing, Dealing with your doctor can be frustrating because of a million things. And, you know, with COVID it got harder because a lot of us were doing telemedicine and not as much in person, and just, just a whole collage of things. And so the first thing just to keep in mind, as frustrating as the healthcare system can be, is that if you start with the idea that your doctor is doing the very best they can, under the circumstances in which they practice. Now, that's different for different doctors. Some people have their own clinic, some people work in a big giant clinic run by other people, some people work in some kind of combination thereof. But generally speaking, they're really just trying to do the best that they can with what they're working with, et cetera. They probably do have a lot of time constraints. And most doctors I've ever met realize they have time constraints, but they don't want to, you know, they don't necessarily think they're great. It's just part of the way that the practice goes. Now, there's different healthcare providers that take different amount of time, but everybody has time constraints to one degree or another. Now, the next thing that you can do to help out would be to be prepared. Now, if you're going in and you have a very obvious acute problem, Okay, you're— you have a rash, you're having an allergic reaction, or you've broken a bone, or, you know, you have strep throat or something. The pathway to the doctor seeing you, figuring out what's going on and doing something about it is pretty linear. It's pretty straight. And there's not a whole lot really that needs to happen other than some questions, maybe some testing, and then some therapy or prescribing or whatever. But in many cases, especially if you're being seen for a number of things, uh, your doctor— and especially if you only see your doctor, say, once or twice a year— your doctor is not going to have you kind of front of mind. Now, they'll see you're coming in, they'll look at your profile, they'll know all that stuff, but it's not like they just saw you last week. And so there could be a lot that happened in the last 6 months or 12 months since you saw them. So you might want to make just a little list, you know, on a little 3x5 card or put it in your phone or whatever. And you can just take a look at it and go through and say, you know, because they will say, has anything changed? Any newer medications? Anything else? You stopped taking anything? Any other things in your life? So let's say in the last 6 months or a year, you had one trip to the emergency room because something happened. You want to make sure they know it. They may know about it. They may not. let's say in the last month since you've seen them, you had to stop taking a medication because you saw another, let's say a specialist, and they said, we're gonna do a different type of therapy for that. Your doctor may or may not have notes from that specialist and may not know, so they need to update your profile. Also, occasionally this happens where somebody has a new allergy. And so maybe it's not on your profile that you're latex allergic and you never knew that and you got exposed to a latex product had a bad allergic reaction, that needs to be on your profile. Even though that most of medicine is done in a latex-free environment now, that doesn't mean it's 100%. And, you know, those things need to be on there. Or another thing I've seen happen fairly frequently, so you've never had a particular drug prescribed before. Let's say you went to the emergency room or you went somewhere, saw a specialist, and they prescribed something and you reacted very badly to it, and you'd never had that before. Well, that needs to be on your profile too. So it's sort of like updating, you know, your doctor so they have clear communication. A lot of times in modern medicine— not always, but a lot of times in modern medicine— you, uh, kind of get one thing to work on per visit. They call it chief complaint. And that's great if you have one thing to work on. If you have a more complex case You need to communicate that up front. And if it's, you know, you're in a system where it's pretty— you've been trained that, you know, you've got one thing to check in on today with the doctor because they've only got this amount of time. The way that I would present that is, you know, there have been a number of changes in my health in the last year. I'm concerned about X, Y, and Z, and here's kind of the constellation of things going on. How are you and I going to work together to manage all of that? Because this is way more than, you know, just checking on my blood pressure medicine or something like that. And sometimes they'll be able to just get in and work on it. Sometimes they'll say, well, okay, let's take care of top priority first today. We'll make another appointment for you in a couple of days or next week, and we'll deal with priority list B and maybe list C on another, you know, occasion. And we'll get that moving forward. Often what they will do is they'll look and say, well, the top priority would be medication changes or refills, anything that requires new laboratory tests or X-rays or imaging, et cetera. And so we get that rolling first. And then the other things, you know, maybe we'll check after we get some of this data back from your laboratory testing. So that is also very important. While you're at the office, it's a little more common now for people to record stuff. Always ask before you record things. But normally that's a very innocuous thing, or just write down notes or take notes and just tell your doctor what you did. Just tell them, look, I'm, you know, my memory is only as good as my memory is, and I'm going to write down what you're telling me. They'll probably be pretty impressed. If the clinic that you visit gives walkout notes, which sometimes they do, especially with more complex things, And you know what's in those, then it may decrease the amount of stuff you have to look at. But before you leave, take a look at your walkout notes and then, you know, make sure that there's nothing you don't understand, or, you know, there's a drug on there that you didn't know you were getting, or you don't know why you're getting it, or whatever. And as we kind of run out of time on this little section, I just want to put in a couple of other little things. One is, especially if it's something that's very complex or you have a new diagnosis. So we see this a lot with oncology, with cancer patients where, you know, they didn't know they had cancer 3 weeks ago and now, you know, they're going to see the oncologist or, or the integrative oncology team or whoever for the first time. It's super overwhelming to do that. Or if you have a complex chronic illness where you've got a lot of things going on, it's, it's very overwhelming. You don't feel feel good. Uh, in the case of cancer, you know, a lot of times it's like you've been hit by a bus of emotions and, you know, you're sort of overwrought. So one of the things to consider when you're doing that is, uh, in addition to, you know, being prepared and taking notes, is bring a friend. Bring somebody who maybe can be your scribe and take notes for you and who will be a second set of ears to listen for you. Because, uh, whether it's a complex chronic illness case where there's just lots of different things going on, or you have cancer, whether it's a new diagnosis or an old diagnosis, it's really important that you have other ears on that because your doctor is going to be coming from the point of view of problem solving and trying to get these things done and these things scheduled. And they may do a really good job of summarizing and writing it down or telling you face to face and talking you through things. But especially in the case of oncology practice, you can walk out of there and And literally kind of go into a haze just because of the stress of the diagnosis. Same thing happens with your complex chronic illness cases as well. So a friend, somebody to help back you up, somebody to keep maybe notes for you or just bounce things off of that you may have heard— very, very important. So to reiterate, we want you to remember that your healthcare provider is doing the very best that they can in the system they work in. We don't always work in a perfect system. We certainly don't always work in systems that are set up the way that we would set them up due to many, many factors. And so if you want, please, you know, always remember that first. We're doing our best. Next is be prepared. So, you know, write down if it's more than just your annual check-in and they're going to refill your prescriptions and that's all, then great. But anything that's happened to you, any new doctors you've seen, any other stuff going on, make sure that you you check in and let them know. Be prepared in having that written down. That'll make it go a little bit faster. If it is a system where you get kind of one crack at one group of problems and then you got to do the others elsewhere, tell the doctor up front, you know, that I've got a lot to work on and I know we can only have time to do certain things. So here's what I see going on in my life. Here's what's happening. How do we manage that with follow-up appointments, etc.? And then, you know, take notes and/or have somebody come with you to take notes. And as I said, with permission, you can also record if you need to. Again, that's getting a lot more common now, but you do need to ask before you, you know, record an interaction just so that everybody's on the same page that this is being recorded. And sometimes, you know, the healthcare provider would get a little— they'll be like, why do you want to record this? And, you know, just say, look, this is to help my memory. There's a lot going on. You're going to describe things to me. I just, I want to have it in your words. You know, if you have somebody else with you, you might need a little bit less of that, but if you're alone, that can be very, very helpful as long as they give you permission to do that. And then just overall, just a little bit of planning goes a long way. So before you go in, look backwards and say, is there, you know, you may have a medicine you don't think you need anymore. You may have been put on a medicine that was for a presumptive reason and you're not using it anymore. It doesn't seem to be doing anything. That's certainly something you want to bring up with the doctor when you get there. All right. Well, this is our pro tip section. Again, thanks for all your subscribers. We're on all the pod burners, CTR Radio, Direct Live, and YouTube. So like, share, and subscribe. And we'll see you on the next little section.
