Chip Chick
3. “Are there any alternative treatments?”
4. “What are the side effects of this medication? What should I do if I experience any of them?”
5. “When and how should I take the medication?”
It can also be crucial to ask your doctor if you’ve treated anyone with your condition before. This question is especially relevant when you have an uncommon diagnosis.
It’s vital to remember that you are your greatest ally in the doctor’s office. Paying attention to your own body’s signals, keeping track of reactions to different treatment methods, and communicating these observations to your doctor will help them do their job better.
Shelli Pavone, the CEO of Inlightened who has dedicated her career to health care, explains on TikTok that tracking your symptoms and conducting individual research can provide your doctor with more context for your care. We want to believe that our doctors have thought of everything, but what happens when they haven’t?
What the doctor tells you in your appointment may only be a “working diagnosis” conceived from what you’ve told them and their own medical background, or possibly a second opinion.
A helpful tip learned in medical school can potentially lead your doctor to explore other diagnostic possibilities they may have prematurely dismissed.
The key is to ask for your differential diagnosis for your symptoms or the process they went through to narrow down their possible cause.
A fourth-year medical student, Dorender Dankwa, shares with users what you can do if you’re not quite sure that your doctor is hearing you.
Again, this relies on asking your doctor specific questions about how they rule out other possible diagnoses and “what’s the evidence for and against that differential?”
