The relationship between doctor and patient is crucial to effective healthcare. This website “Help with My Doctor” is designed to help you, the patient, manage that relationship as capably as possible. For doctors, there are also suggestions as to how the relationship should, in my view, develop, and how doctors can further help their patient to gain from the medical experience.
For the patient with a health concern, it is designed to help you to get a speedy and effective response from medical services. The world of medical care is, for most people, an impenetrable maze. However, there are some ways into the maze if you know how to set about it.
There is a great deal of advice and information covered here. However, if you are very short of time go straight to the bullet points in dark red relating to Section A and to guidance about online research in Section B
Section A:
Advice on handling the doctor-patient relationship.
Topics
- How to get the most out of a consultation with your doctor
- The Examination
- How should the consultation end satisfactorily?
- How to get your results
- Practical advice about your consultation
- What to look for in the setting
- What to do if a consultation seems to be going wrong
- What to do next if not satisfied with the consultation
- Things which can hamper you in a consultation
- Things which can hamper the doctor in a consultation
- How to get a good second opinion
- The Doctor’s working day: Your GP
- The Hospital Consultant’s Day
- Surviving the Accident and Emergency Department
- Managing a Hospital In-patient Stay
- Discussion about Risks
- Withdrawal of Treatment
- Tele-Medicine
- How to help your children at the doctors
- Finding or Changing Your GP
- How to use Private Healthcare
- Consultation through an interpreter
- Complaints
- How to thank your doctor
Section B:
How this relationship is evolving.
Topics
- Why the doctor patient relationship needs to change
- Benefits of a new approach (with examples)
- The great doctor-patient imbalance
- The Ambition: from the patients’ point of view
- Patient Education
- The choice of a consultation companion
- What to do in the face of bad news
- Understanding shorthand: ‘Scores and Pathways’
- How to research profitably for health information on the internet
- Patient Responsibility
The Doctor’s role today