Make The Most Of Your Visit To The Doctor

By Author: Dr. Victor Marchione
Total Articles: 90
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A visit to the doctor doesn’t happen very often. Most people go for a routine check-up only once a year. Of course, if you’re not feeling well, you might have a few extra appointments on top of this yearly visit, but even if you get to see your doctor frequently, getting good care can still be a challenge. Appointments may be rushed, treatment options may be confusing and self-care strategies that you can use at home may not even get touched upon.
With these potential difficulties in mind, here are some suggestions for dealing with common health issues and making the most of your doctor’s visit.
How to Talk to Your Doctor
First things first: let’s talk about how to maximize communication during a doctor’s visit. Visiting your doctor can make you nervous. Sometimes it can also make you impatient or even confused. Unfortunately, you may have only a few minutes with your health-care provider to sort out all of your health issues.
After the appointment, you might remember something that you forgot to ask, or you may forget what the doctor or nurse ...
... said to you while you were in the examination room. Being prepared can help you get the information that you need. Here are some things that you can bring to make the most of your doctor’s visit:
• Make a list of your concerns, plus any allergies that you have and all medicines, herbs or vitamins that you take
• Take a notepad or tape recorder into the examination room, or if it feels more comfortable, bring a trusted friend or relative
• Write out a description of your symptoms—when they started, what makes them better, etc.
It might seem like a lot of trouble to go to, but a recent study has confirmed that poor communication between doctor and patient can have serious consequences.
Researchers analyzed data from 226 high-blood-pressure patients and 39 physicians at 15 primary-care practices in Baltimore, MD. The research team listened to audio recordings of patients’ visits to their doctors. The study’s authors noted the length of the visits, the number of medically focused statements made and the overall conversations between doctors and patients.
The researchers found that black patients experienced shorter office visits and had less medical and psycho/social dialogue with their doctors than white patients had. The research team concluded that black patients with high blood pressure often seem to struggle to communicate with their doctors, potentially leading to worse disease outcomes.
The researchers noted that there may be several reasons for poor communication between doctor and patient. Patients might not trust their physicians or somehow feel disconnected from them. Physicians, perhaps reacting to their quiet patients, may feel less inclined to talk to them.1
It is important that you understand your diagnosis and any treatments. Ask your health-care provider to write down his or her instructions to you so that it’s not just a verbal exchange. If you still have trouble understanding, ask where you can go for more information.

What You Should Know About CT Scans
One the challenges of getting the most from a doctor’s visit is understanding all of the medical jargon. It may seem as if there is a bewildering array of medical tests and treatments available. Keeping track of which are right for you is, of course, largely your doctor’s responsibility, but you’ll want to also acquire a little knowledge yourself. Research any proposed tests and treatments if you can.
Take, for example, a common and frequently used diagnostic tool: the CT test. CT scanning is used by your doctor to diagnose and treat a whole host of medical conditions. CT scanning combines special x-ray equipment with computers in order to take pictures of the inside of your body. CT scans of internal organs, bones, soft tissue and blood vessels provide a chance for your doctor to see more details than regular x-ray exams. A CT scan can provide detailed images of both blood vessels and tissues, for example, and can be used to detect heart disease.
CT scans are a great advance in health prevention. These scans can show the beginning of problems with the heart, when a lot can still be done to remedy the situation. Staving off heart disease at the onset can go a long way toward preventing something as drastic as heart failure further down the line.
If you have occasional CT scans done to monitor the health of your heart, here’s something to be aware of: the quality of a CT scan can be affected by a number of factors, according to U.S. researchers. These factors include a person’s ethnicity, height/weight ratio and heart rate.
A research team looked at the results from “multi-detector computed tomography” (MDCT) tests. The researchers studied the scans of 291 patients with clogged arteries. They found that images from black patients had poorer quality than those from white patients. Other factors that affected the quality of images were high heart rate, “arrhythmia,” obesity and high coronary calcium.

At-home Care Benefits Heart Patients
Besides good communication and gaining an understanding of medical tests and treatments, you’ll want to try to tap into at-home-care resources. The amount of time that you actually spend at the doctor’s office is short—the bulk of healing from any ailment will likely take place at home. It’s important to know what you can do to help yourself while convalescing. This can be true for less worrisome conditions like a cold, but also for more serious problems.
Let’s look at an example that highlights the benefit of home -care for a very serious problem: heart failure. According to recent statistics, almost 5.0 million North Americans suffer from chronic heart failure. Those who are living with chronic heart failure find that their hearts must struggle to pump blood to the rest of their bodies. In the U.S., worsening chronic heart failure causes more than 1.0 million hospital admissions a year. Among these patients, 50% live with the risk of readmission within six months of discharge, according to a new study.
For the study, Italian researchers recruited patients aged 75 years or older with worsening chronic heart failure. Some of the patients were treated at the hospital, while others received hospital-at-home care supervised by a doctor.
After six months, 15% of the patients had died. Although the researchers found no difference in the death rate between the groups, it took longer, on average, for those who were treated at home to be readmitted.
Some other important benefits were noticed with the at-home-care group: they improved in terms of depression, nutritional status and quality of life, the researchers found. The research team concluded that patients with worsening chronic heart failure may find that “hospital-at-home” care is a good alternative to treatment in a traditional hospital.3
Health care has been moving in different directions over the past few years. Some medical institutions now favor alternatives to traditional acute care in hospitals, such as “telehealth” technologies and treatment at home. The research team admits that further development of hospital-at-home care will require additional research and dedicated resources to support its success.
The benefits of at-home hospital care include support from family. It is often easier for family members to help out during a medical convalescence if they do not have to worry about traveling to a hospital. Another benefit is that a nutritious diet can be provided that specifically suits the patient.

Phone Counseling Helps Ease Depression
Here’s one final thing to consider when going to a doctor’s appointment: don’t forget about your mental health. How you feel emotionally and mentally can greatly affect how you feel physically. Don’t forget that you can talk to your doctor about your mental health, too, and get support.
Depression, for example, affects just about everyone at some point or another. A major event, such as the sudden loss of a loved one or the loss of a job, could trigger a bout of depression. Other factors may be more subtle, such as ongoing issues with family and friends, stress, unease about the future and unresolved issues from the past. Even a diet that is low in key vitamins and minerals could cause feelings of depression.
Whatever its source, depression can be both frightening and difficult to deal with. Anyone who is sick for an extended period can also struggle with feeling a little depressed.
Fortunately, at its root, depression is really just a sign that something needs to be addressed and resolved. Depression is often a way for your body to tell you that it’s time to stop and take stock of your feelings. You can use your doctor’s visit to help you understand what’s going on and get connected with the right resources to help you to feel better.
Many find that counseling is beneficial when it comes to treating depression. However, not everyone has access to affordable therapy sessions. Many simply go without the benefit of talking through issues with a trained professional because they don’t have the funds, but here’s another example where talking through things with your doctor while at an appointment might lead you to a way to feel better.
According to a recent study, phone therapy is proving to be very effective in helping those who are depressed. A U.S. research team has found that an intensive telephone-counseling program for people with depression offers relief at a moderate cost.

The study was ongoing for two years. The researchers found that telephone-care management alone led to an average gain of 29 depression-free days and a $676.00 increase in outpatient health-care costs, compared with usual care. Telephone-care management plus psychotherapy, on the other hand, led to a gain of 46 depression-free days and $397.00 in added outpatient costs.
Previous research suggests that primary-care patients who are treated for depression are, on average, willing to pay approximately $10.00 for an additional day free of depression. The researchers cautioned that the primary goal of depression treatment is to relieve suffering, not to decrease health-care costs, and they don’t intend to imply that depression treatment is justified only if it saves money. However, they hope that the results will offer some guidance in ongoing efforts to improve care for depression.4
In this particular study, it seems that the balance of added benefits and added costs was more favorable for the more intensive program that combined psychotherapy over the phone with care management.
So there you have it: four ways to help make the most of your next doctor’s visit. Use good communication skills while at your appointment, learn about tests and treatments that are being offered for your particular health issues, get help from your doctor to access at-home care resources and, finally, don’t forget to use your doctor’s appointment to address your mental and emotional health, too.

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