Patient Perspective Blog #3

From a patient’s standpoint, it is hard for me to pick one side. There are so many things that the patient is not told from the beginning as well as information that the patient might have chosen not to inform the physician about that can lead to adverse effects. No and days we want to have an open relationship with our primary care doctor but there are still things we do not tell them and therefore cannot receive the best care possible. And in the case of emergency if this information is not in our file how will we get the best possible care.

I feel that doctors today seem to have trouble telling their patients what they need to do. For example, my maternal grandmother is considered overweight by BMI standards; however her doctor has not told her she needs to lose weight. He has only congratulated her on lowering her cholesterol levels. Why is he afraid to tell his patient the truth? I would personally respect them more for telling the truth than for omitting it. I think it stems back to the fact that if physician themselves is overweight, they do not want to look like a hypocrite telling patients to lose weight when clearly then need to as well.

As a patient I might be thinking that I don’t want to bring up too many problems and risk the chance of my health insurance skyrocketing. Sometimes patients do not want to hear the truth and would rather live in a dream world where everything is perfect. Another example, one of my relatives is grossly overweight and a diabetic; they have been switching doctors for years because they do not want them to know they are eating way too much on a daily basis. They recently had foot surgery and because of their weight and immobility the wound never closed. It actually got to the point where they were placed in the hospital and the doctors were considering amputation. Thankfully they still have their foot and this experience has put a scare into them. But are they doing anything about it at this point? They tell everyone that they have lost weight but the only person who would really know is their doctor and they have been switching every six months. This, in my opinion is clearly case of delusion that there is nothing wrong with them. But patients such as this one do it all the time. So who can we really believe is a fault, the physician or the patient?