Dear friends:
In day-to-day practice I find one of the most enjoyable
aspects of patient interaction is an opportunity to share with patients
their specific diagnoses, treatment options, and home care instructions.
I continue to be amazed at how many patients walk through my front door
having seen multiple doctors and medical specialists, taken x-rays, MRIs
and the like without having been given a diagnosis or an explanation of
their pain. Their treatment protocol is often "let's try this for
a while". Perhaps you are one of these people. It has been correctly
stated that "the doctor who treats only the pain is lost".
Most people who make an appointment to see me do so because of pain. Although
pain has successfully done its job by bringing them to seek help, few
people realize the pain is only a symptom, an alarm, and not the primary
problem. The doctor that treats only the symptom is analogous to a person
pulling out the oil light on the car dashboard to fix the oil problem.
Besides that, have you noticed that the symptoms covering drug advertisements
spend the first half of the commercial showing you perfectly healthy happy
people and the second half of the commercial telling you all the side
effects?
The word "doctor" in Latin means teacher. We doctors have an
awesome responsibility and opportunity to competently recognize the cause
for our patients' pain. As well we should teach our patients their responsibility
to understand their condition and how to best control their problem. It
is my routine practice to give a complete report of findings after my
physical, orthopedic, neurological, and imaging examination. In this report,
I show patients their x-rays and fully outline their problem, its treatment
by me (or if need be, referral to another specialist), their home instructions
for care, nutritional advice, and clinical expectations of success based
on research. This not only leads to patient satisfaction, but improvement
in their functional outcomes.
More proof of this comes from an article in SPINE 2001; 26(19): 2065-72.
This paper supports the concept that teaching patients will give them
improved results. In this study eight doctors from six practices randomized
311 back pain patients. After having been given patient instruction, they
were followed up after three weeks. The study demonstrated that doctors
can and do increase patient satisfaction and moderately improve functional
outcomes by teaching. The truth can set you "pain" free as well.
Lee Hazen is a chiropractor in Wildomar. He can be reached at (951) 609-0399.
