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Publié par | Self-Counsel Press |
Date de parution | 15 mai 2015 |
Nombre de lectures | 0 |
EAN13 | 9781770409781 |
Langue | English |
Poids de l'ouvrage | 1 Mo |
Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0030€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.
Extrait
Talk to Your Doc
The Patient’s Guide
Mary F. Hawkins
Self-Counsel Press
(a division of)
International Self-Counsel Press Ltd.
USA Canada
Copyright © 2015
International Self-Counsel Press
All rights reserved.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Changing Health-care System
1. General Practitioners
2. Hospitals
3. Walk-in Clinics
4. Health-Insurance Plans
5. Ambulatory Care
6. Home Care
7. Meals on Wheels
8. Palliative Care
9. Other Community-Based Programs
10. The Health-care Team
11. The Limitations of the System
Checklist 1: Do You Know What’s Available?
Chapter 2: Knowing Yourself
1. Know Your Body
Checklist 2: What Kind of Patient Are You?
2. Know Your Communication Style
Checklist 3: How Do You Gather Information?
Checklist 4: Not Listening
Checklist 5: What Kind of Listener Are You?
3. Talk to the Doctor
Checklist 6: What Type of Communication Style Do You Use?
Chapter 3: Understanding Your Relationship with Your Doctor
1. Dependency and Vulnerability
2. Patient Expectations of the Doctor
3. What Kind of a Relationship Do You Want with Your Doctor?
4. Be an Active Participant in Your Health Care
Checklist 7: Do You Take an Active Role?
Checklist 8: Are You an Inactive Participant?
5. Are You and Your Doctor a “Good Fit”?
Checklist 9: The Pros and Cons of Your Relationship with Your Doctor
Checklist 10: Do You and Your Doctor Have a Good Relationship?
Chapter 4: Communicating with Your Doctor
1. Finding a Common Language
2. What Your Doctor Should Know
3. The Challenge of Remembering
4. When You and Your Doctor Disagree
5. When You Are Dissatisfied or Satisfied
Checklist 11: Do You Communicate with Your Doctor Effectively?
Chapter 5: Communicating on Behalf of Others
1. Communicating on Behalf of Children
2. Communicating on Behalf of the Elderly
3. Communicating on Behalf of Someone Who Is Terminally Ill
4. Communicating on Behalf of People with Language and Cultural Barriers
Chapter 6: Beyond the Routine Checkup
1. Prescribed Drugs
Checklist 12: Ask the Doctor or Pharmacist about Medications — Prescription and Over-the-Counter
2. When You Prefer Alternative Medicines or Therapies
Checklist 13: Questions to Ask a Homeopathic or Naturopathic Doctor or Pharmacist
3. When the Doctor Is Away
4. When You Are Being Sent for Tests
Checklist 14: What to Ask the Doctor about Your Tests
5. Being Referred to a Specialist
Checklist 15: What to Ask the Specialist
6. What to Do When a Health-care Crisis Happens
7. Chronic Health Problems
8. Understanding Illness
Checklist 16: Ask the Doctor
9. Building a Support Network
10. When Doctors Have No Answers
11. When You Should Get a Second Opinion
Chapter 7: Searching for a New Doctor
1. Approaches to Looking for a Doctor
Checklist 17: Questions to Ask a Potential New Doctor
Chapter 8: Beyond Face-to-Face Communication
1. Internet, Email, and Health Care
2. Interacting with Doctors in the Future
3. Closing the Communication Gap
Resources
1. United States
2. Canada
3. Disease-Specific Websites
4. Internet Support Groups
5. Virtual Medical and Telemedicine Websites
6. Additional Reading
Download Kit
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notice to Readers
Self-Counsel Press thanks you for purchasing this ebook.
Preface
When I began teaching communication to university and college students, I often heard them say at the beginning of the course, “Communication, oh, that’s easy. I’ll get an A in this class.” As the semester progressed they became perplexed and sometimes confused by the complexity of the communication process.
By the end of the term, many students told me how much they had learned from the lectures, group work, and discussions. They proudly told me how they now used what they had learned about communication in their everyday relationships. Many of these students matured through this process of learning.
My years of teaching oral and written communications, and personal interest led me to explore varied facets of communication, especially in the area of health. My graduate thesis was titled “Communicative Patterns and Leader Behaviour of Multi-Disciplinary Health Care Teams in Association with Team Cohesion and Team Culture.” This study involved spending eight months with health-care teams in a central New York metropolitan hospital. I joined these teams three mornings a week at 5 a.m. I observed the interactions of surgeons and health-care professionals inside and outside of the operating rooms. I also entered patient rooms with team members and observed the interactions between the doctors and patients. I noted how they responded to one another, and its importance to the overall dynamic of health care. It was this dynamic that led me to study the nature of communication between doctors and patients. However, it was not this alone that pulled me toward this topic.
In 1997, I wrote a book entitled Unshielded: The Human Cost of the Dalkon Shield. (The Dalkon Shield was a contraceptive device that caused women gynecological injury in the 1970s). I talked to many survivors of injury when I was researching the book, and I began to hear devastating complaints about negative responses from doctors. The perception of their experiences haunted these women. I asked them: “Did you ever tell the doctor how you felt about his or her response to you?” The reply was usually: “No, what was the point? The doctor would not listen anyway.” My ear became attuned to people in my everyday encounters who described similar experiences in the doctor-patient relationship. Certainly, not all people shared this view, but there were enough that I wondered why people did not feel comfortable asserting themselves more. I concluded that some people had genuine difficulty in communicating their feelings to their doctors.
In the course of writing a weekly newspaper column on doctor-patient relations, I found confirmation of the latter conclusion in the complaints and questions I received from readers. I also conducted focus groups with patients as well as developed and gathered additional information via surveys. By now, I was well on my way to gathering anecdotes from these people I invited to the focus groups. They, among others, taught me that people voice their complaints to anyone who will listen — except to their doctor.
With the encouragement of many people, I have written Talk to Your Doc . It is my hope that this book will help you express how you feel to your doctor leading you to better health care.
Introduction
At one time or another, most of us have complained to someone else about feeling dissatisfied with a visit with a doctor. Much of this dissatisfaction points to long waiting times, a doctor’s rushed style, extra fees the doctor might charge, or the time it takes to get an appointment with a specialist. When I hear these complaints, I am convinced that the difficulty lies in feeling uncomfortable in expressing concerns or dissatisfaction to the doctor or any other authority figure.
Some of you may feel intimidated by the doctor and don’t want to say you don’t understand or that you’re upset about having to wait two hours, or perhaps you think that’s just the way it’s supposed to be. More serious concerns, such as waiting months to have a hip replacement or knee surgery, may well go unsaid because you think “Why rock the boat?” or “I don’t want to upset the doctor.” In essence, you might convince yourself it is not important to communicate how you feel; you’d prefer to keep the peace. Your reluctance to speak up may relate to your personality or the way you interact with others, or perhaps you feel you depend on the doctor. Cancer patients, for instance, may feel a higher degree of dependence than someone visiting the doctor for a cold. This can vary, of course, according to who you are as a person and what level of support you need and from whom. Deciding when to speak up can be a balancing act, especially when sharing how you feel with your family or general practitioner (GP) or a specialist, such as an oncologist. ( Note: The terms family practitioner or general practitioner are used interchangeably within North America, but for the purpose of this book I will use the term GP for consistency reasons.)
Any number of factors can influence your degree of sharing. For example, communication may be easier with your GP simply because you might visit the doctor more often than you see your specialist so you develop a more relaxed rapport. However, if you have chronic pain or a life-th