Your doctors seem ready to conclude the visit, but you didn’t understand something or you still have questions. What’s a Healthy Survivor to do?
Remember your job. The purpose of phone calls and in-person visits with physicians is to care for YOU. It’s your job to help that happen—and not to take care of your doctors or their other patients.
Respectfully state your needs. You can preface with something like, “I respect your time,” or “I know you have patients waiting,” or even “I’m worried about taking too much of your time.” The important thing is to state directly: “I didn’t understand what you said about such-and-such, and I need to. Or, “I still have a few questions I need answered.”
Figure out next steps. If your doctors can’t slow down and address your concerns and questions during that visit (for whatever reasons), take comfort in knowing they’re delaying after assessing that your issues are not medically urgent. Together, you can discuss…
How and when you’ll get those questions answered and those needs addressed.
How to manage the waiting; what you should do in the meantime.
Issues that are not medically urgent are still important to your physicians.
Healthy Survivors know that physicians depend on patients to help them do their best job for each and every patient. By sharing your list of questions, you alert your physicians to urgent issues that can’t wait. You prevent miscommunications of omission, which both improves your medical care and decreases your stress. By asking how and when non-urgent issues will be addressed, you help get all your issues addressed in due time.
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