To put “Care” into Healthcare: Why You Should “Care”
Part 2
When I last wrote about healthcare literacy, I confirmed 2 things:
1. Health literacy is a multidimensional issue, with several factors, some which we cannot even define.
2. Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
There are 3 levels of healthcare, federal, institutional, and personal. Federal refers to the policies, practices, and rules governing out healthcare system, a route that often takes years of bureaucratic work, often lagging behind technological advances. Institutional refers to the laws made by educational institutions, like medical schools and regulatory bodies. The truth is, almost nothing changes until it’s a personal battle, which is why healthcare needs to be a personal agenda.
Every human requires healthcare; that is a fact. Not every human cares about the healthcare we receive, that is the reality. This reality has caused us to be delusional about the level of progress healthcare has made. I am not referring to the medical advances or new discoveries and facilities. I am actually referring to the basic, most primal part of healthcare, the care. Providing medical literacy is a part of providing care and how doctors and health care professional do this, should be the litmus test of progress. However, until you and I put this on our personal agenda, there will be no changes. Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
The “Barrier” to better Healthcare
There are several barriers patients face when visiting their doctors. From parking, to long wait times, to short visits and poor conversations, a visit to the doctor’s is nothing but an exercise of your patience. Yet, not too many of us will bother to change this experience. The demand for change is present, the supply of actions isn’t. Allow me to elaborate. If enough patients demand more parking spaces, the clinics have to supply more spaces. If enough patients have longer appointments, doctors have to supply longer appointment slots. If they don’t, patients can take their “business” elsewhere. Change in healthcare is a simple game of supply and demand.
A visit to the doctor’s is an exercise of the patient’s patience.
By not demanding better qualitative care, we are duped to accept the short visits, long wait times, and poor experiences. Your doctor is there to provide you with healthcare recommendations, but it is your responsibility to act on that recommendation. Most of us will speculate on a show recommendation, yet almost none of us will speculate on a healthcare recommendation. A healthcare recommendation for you.
You wouldn’t order off a blank menu. You wouldn’t order clothes without seeing them. You certainly wouldn’t buy a house without inspecting it. So why do we make healthcare decisions without understanding them? Because it is far too complex and intricate for us to understand. I agree. But what does a child, who doesn’t understand a math problem, do? They ask questions. They ask “stupid” questions, they ask the same questions, but they eventually learn that 2+2 does equal 4.
We ask more questions about the menu than we do about our health.
Step One: To Solve the Problem, you Must Understand the Problem
You can’t ask questions about the menu without seeing the menu. You certainly can’t ask questions about your health without understanding it a little better. The healthcare system is too complicated and under the weight of bureaucratic and political jargon, that it will take years, if not decades, before they change the way medical information is communicated. As a patient, it is important that you are equipped with enough knowledge to make better connections, learn more about your health, and then ask questions. Step one is being able to decipher the medical terminology that is thrown at you during a visit. You can’t expect a child to add numbers without learning the numbers first. Similarly, you can’t expect to get a better, more holistic understanding of your health without taking the steps individually to increase your health literacy. Currently, there is a language barrier between a physician and a patient, that is entirely up to the physician to overcome. Though it is necessary that you do your part in reducing this barrier. Understanding medical terminology will reduce the language barrier between you and your physician, because now you have some experience in these terms.
Ask questions. I am not saying you have to ask the “right” questions, I am saying, make it a point to ask questions, ask the “stupid” questions, ask the same questions, but ask. By asking questions we take responsibility, we demand the need to understand our health. We take the bar a little higher for what is considered “acceptable care.”
Asking questions forms a relationship that cannot be forged by online services that provide medical information. A visit to the doctor is more than just pamphlets and long wait times — it is an opportunity to ask, understand, and monitor. I discuss family doctors in this piece because they are often the first point of entry into the healthcare system for many individuals, if you are seeing a specialist then chances are that it’s too late in some cases. A family doctor is able to build knowledge on not just your medical conditions but also the various factors. This prepares doctors to assess current conditions at hand and predict the potential. Unfortunately, WebMD cannot ask you for your past medical history so it can never provide you with the full breadth of your conditions nor can it be custom made.
We can’t blame online portals and services for providing false information. They only provide information to individuals who do not have the knowledge to filter leading to the consumption and overdose of misinformation. These portals exist because patients and doctors are not asking enough questions, prompting patients to surf the web and falsely self-diagnose. These portals exist to provide patients with ALL the information on a give condition. These portals exist to answer every possible question a patient may have. These portals are a poor solution to an even poorer patient-doctor relationship.
How Healthcare Professionals can Help
The patient is responsible for demanding the change, but institutions are responsible for evaluating these demands. There are numerous factors, qualitative and quantitative, that impact patients, from housing, to social status, to genetic predispositions; a physical illness is not always the root cause, rather a consequence of the various factors. So ask questions. It is important that a doctor understands their patient holistically, perhaps it’s not asthma, it’s mold, perhaps their medical condition is merely a reflection of their financial status not their genetics.
This brings up another point. Often times, medical terminology is both cryptic and confusing to the common patient who may not always know what lipids are. It is critical that doctors explain terms in simple terminology — plain and clear language. It is not enough to be able to explain what lipids are, healthcare professionals need to be able to explain simple terms like what it means to “take” a medicine — does this mean oral intake, or is this medicine to be applied on the skin.
So is the answer as simple as asking questions? Yes and no. It is a start as it provides doctors and patients to form a more transparent relation.
It is obvious, plain and simple. Patients NEED to understand their health better. Doctors NEED to be able to evaluate their patient’s changing needs and evolve accordingly. Understanding ones health should not be luxury nor should it only be reserved for the highly educated. Your health is entirely your right, and the right to understand it – that is a need. After all, necessity is the mother of all inventions.
Change is nothing but something that is long overdue.
