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You can develop potentially serious health conditions or illnesses. Good doctors develop excellent treatment plans for their patients, and you may get lots of information about tests, treatments and drugs you may need. But there is a possible problem in how you understand what the doctors and nurses tell you.
In an excellent study http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1204410 J. Weeks and coauthors evaluated over 1100 patients with serious diagnoses of cancer. Between 69% and 81% of the patients did not understand the expected outcomes of their treatment. Surprisingly, although misunderstanding was higher among non-white patients, it was also higher in patients who felt they had excellent communication with their doctors, the opposite of what I expected.
The very high frequency of misunderstandings about expectations means you may not understand the anticipated outcomes of your illness and its treatment. Here are my tips:
- For any condition, ask your doctor what is the outcome the doctor is aiming for: cure of the illness, temporary control of the disease, only symptom control, stabilization of the illness, or slowing progression.
- Ask what can be done to prevent recurrence or worsening, and what signs of recurrence or worsening you should watch for.
- If you do not like the doctor’s description of expected outcomes (you want better!), get a second opinion.
- If standard therapy does not seem to give you all the benefits you want, ask about clinical trials for your condition.
For more information, see Chapter 7 Communicating with Your Doctor in my book “Surviving American Medicine”.
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