Personal Health Responsibility
I've been a Nurse Practitioner practicing medicine for two years. I hear from my provider colleagues that there are offices where there isn't enough time to spend with patients, encouraging and coaching them to change their unhealthy behaviors, and I'm sure that's true. The "business" side of medicine has certainly curbed provider's ability to spend time with the people they care for. It isn't that he or she wants to get rich practicing medicine, but that the costs of maintaining a practice have increased incredibly. Malpractice insurance alone has increased astronomically; mine by 600% this past year. If you are a physician practicing medicine, especially in a high-risk area like delivering babies or doing surgery, those costs alone could put you out of business. The only option one has is to pick up the pace in the office so that you can see more people in a day and thus increase your income.
The health care system in this country is in crisis, and I propose that one of the components of the repair plan is that we stop thinking of providers as people who "make us better," or help us cure a health problem. Be careful what you read there. I'm not saying that providers aren't supposed to help us to get better, what I am saying is that it's not your provider's responsibility to make you better. It's actually your responsibility to make you better.
In the last decade there has been a lot of talk about how health care consumers are "educating" themselves at sites like WebMD so that they can talk about their illnesses and treatment options with their providers. Supposedly this was going to play out as individuals becoming more responsible for their own health. This movement was deemed a great departure from the past when doctors, with all their medical knowledge, would proclaim from their pedestal what the patient should "do" in order to get well. What they should do usually included taking a medication, and people came to expect that when they went to the doctor they'd come out with a prescription. This was a place where medicine got into trouble. It was so cool to have the power to help people with a pill that we exploited it. Why not? The practice of medicine was supposed to help people feel better, and Americans were moving into an age of expecting instant gratification. Why should medicine be any different?
This attitude about the purpose of medical practice has brought us to where we are today; most individuals still take no personal responsibility for their health. They come to medical practices overweight or obese and ask for a pill or gastric bypass surgery. When we tell them that the pills work poorly overall (because people try to eat the way they always do and expect the pill to work) and that after surgery a large percentage of individuals regain as much as 50% of their weight, they are devastated. When individuals go for years with their diabetes out of control, despite being told that it will cause them major health problems, do they follow advice to eat differently or exercise more? Does the patient with asthma who coughs all night and loses sleep really continue to smoke because it's pleasurable? I don't think so. I think it's just easier to continue having bad health habits than it is to be responsible for changing. Then the individual also can blame their provider for not doing their part to "make" them change their poor health behaviors.
Although the people that I interact with in my practice are more well informed than individuals that I worked with as an RN 10 years ago, I still don't see any real change in health behavior. Telling a provider that you want the latest treatment or pill that you saw advertised on the television is not being responsible for your own health. Going to your provider and asking, "what can I do to improve this situation?" and really listening to the answer is being personally responsible. Following those suggestions and taking part in you own health care by exercising more, eating less, and quitting smoking are examples of being personally responsible for your health. If you do these things, I will guarantee that your provider will make time to listen, and to help you be successful. And this will be the beginning of a cure for our health care crisis.
Laurie
Related Topics: Getting the care you need, Patient Doctor Partnership
The health care system in this country is in crisis, and I propose that one of the components of the repair plan is that we stop thinking of providers as people who "make us better," or help us cure a health problem. Be careful what you read there. I'm not saying that providers aren't supposed to help us to get better, what I am saying is that it's not your provider's responsibility to make you better. It's actually your responsibility to make you better.
In the last decade there has been a lot of talk about how health care consumers are "educating" themselves at sites like WebMD so that they can talk about their illnesses and treatment options with their providers. Supposedly this was going to play out as individuals becoming more responsible for their own health. This movement was deemed a great departure from the past when doctors, with all their medical knowledge, would proclaim from their pedestal what the patient should "do" in order to get well. What they should do usually included taking a medication, and people came to expect that when they went to the doctor they'd come out with a prescription. This was a place where medicine got into trouble. It was so cool to have the power to help people with a pill that we exploited it. Why not? The practice of medicine was supposed to help people feel better, and Americans were moving into an age of expecting instant gratification. Why should medicine be any different?
This attitude about the purpose of medical practice has brought us to where we are today; most individuals still take no personal responsibility for their health. They come to medical practices overweight or obese and ask for a pill or gastric bypass surgery. When we tell them that the pills work poorly overall (because people try to eat the way they always do and expect the pill to work) and that after surgery a large percentage of individuals regain as much as 50% of their weight, they are devastated. When individuals go for years with their diabetes out of control, despite being told that it will cause them major health problems, do they follow advice to eat differently or exercise more? Does the patient with asthma who coughs all night and loses sleep really continue to smoke because it's pleasurable? I don't think so. I think it's just easier to continue having bad health habits than it is to be responsible for changing. Then the individual also can blame their provider for not doing their part to "make" them change their poor health behaviors.
Although the people that I interact with in my practice are more well informed than individuals that I worked with as an RN 10 years ago, I still don't see any real change in health behavior. Telling a provider that you want the latest treatment or pill that you saw advertised on the television is not being responsible for your own health. Going to your provider and asking, "what can I do to improve this situation?" and really listening to the answer is being personally responsible. Following those suggestions and taking part in you own health care by exercising more, eating less, and quitting smoking are examples of being personally responsible for your health. If you do these things, I will guarantee that your provider will make time to listen, and to help you be successful. And this will be the beginning of a cure for our health care crisis.
Laurie
Related Topics: Getting the care you need, Patient Doctor Partnership
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