Michael Douglas is a cancer survivor. His story should be a lesson for us all. Read about it in my latest Huffington Post article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cary-a-presant-md/dr-carys-five-lessons-to-_b_5974602.html
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…
Doctors have been talking about shared decision-making by patients with physicians for over a decade, at least since the Institute of Medicine reported “Crossing the Quality Chasm” in 2001. But for you to have your voice heard in making decisions about your own health care, doctors must be giving you honest and complete background information about your condition, and be discussing the pros and cons of proposed treatments.
In a recent analysis, authors concluded that less…