THE EXPERT PATIENT

I signed up for remedyfind newsletters and this article was in the last one related to MS. There are also newletters related to many other disorders. We decided that this article belonged on our site and Brett was nice enough to allow us to use it. Wish I had written it! I look forward to more of his articles.

Go to his site and signup. He is sponsored by NO DRUG COMPANY. That is rare these days.

The Expert Patient

The "expert patient" is a phrase that was coined several years ago and which refers to individuals who take an active interest in the health issues they face and who are motivated to work in partnership with their doctors and other health professionals to achieve successful results. Depending on who you talk to in the medical profession, expert patients are either welcomed with open arms, or viewed with utter terror. I would like to propose that if you are a member of RemedyFind, or indeed just a browser of the site and occasional newsletter reader, that you probably fall into this category of expert patient.

Here are some of our characteristics. We are individuals with chronic health problems who have the confidence, skills, information and knowledge to play a central role in the management of our own health issues. We are not about to sit back idly and let professionals tell us what treatments we must take. We want to know why those treatments are being recommended, what risks are involved and what alternatives exist. If we have researched treatment options that the healthcare professional feels are unsuitable, we want to be told why. If we mention a treatment that the doctor is not familiar with, or has never prescribed, we would hope for an openness on their part to investigate this new option.

We expect our doctors and other health professionals to be familiar with, or at least open to, the use of diet, nutritional supplements and even alternative / complimentary therapies when there is reasonable evidence that they may be useful adjuncts to medication and other traditional therapies. Yes, at doctor appointments we may appear somewhat intimidating clutching our stack of printouts of clinical studies from the PubMed / National Library of Medicine web site, but that doesn't mean we are necessarily distrustful or dissatisfied consumers. It simply shows that we want to be seen as partners in the decision making process. Yes, we may be demanding, but that doesn't mean we are adversarial or unreasonable. Very importantly, we recognize our limits. A few hours, or even a few decades of research does not qualify us as amateur neurologists or rheumatologists. And rather than intending to be the time-consuming "patients from hell", our intention is to assimilate and relay up-to-date research to help our doctor save time, and to make better use of the understandably limited face-to-face appointment time that is available.

Apparently some physicians feel the phrase "expert patient" is too adversarial. They see it as intimidating, implying that the patient is now pretending to be an equal in knowledge and authority to the trained professional. Obviously this isn't the case, and I can't imagine that many of us would be offended to be called "resourceful" or "involved" patients. Whatever we are called - expert, resourceful, involved, collaborative - we are sure to grow in numbers. With our access to the web and its nearly limitless resources, the future of clinical care is undoubtedly evolving towards a higher degree of patient involvement. As patients, more of us are more literate about what ails us than at any time in human history, and healthcare professionals need to accept this. At the same time, patients need to acknowledge the indispensable training and expertise that their healthcare professionals provide. Working together, rather than against each other, is obviously the most potent formula for coming up with treatment strategies that really work.

REMEDY fIND Founder/Editor Brett Hodges