Health Guidance

The quality and the cost of medical care depend more on you than on your doctor.
To become a wise medical consumer, start with three basic principles:

* Work in partnership with your doctor and health care team.
* Share in every medical decision.
* Become skilled at obtaining medical care.

By following these three principles, you will gain more control over the quality and cost of your health care than you have ever had before.

Work in Partnership With Your Doctor

Good partnerships are based on a common goal, shared effort, and good communication. If you and your doctor can make these things happen, you will both gain from the partnership. You will get better care and your doctor will practice good medicine.

Five Ways to Be a Good Partner

1. Take good care of yourself. Both you and your doctor would prefer that you don’t get sick in the first place. And if problems arise, you both want a return to good health as soon as possible.

2. At the first sign of a health problem, observe and record your symptoms. Your record of symptoms will help both you and your doctor make an accurate diagnosis. And the better job you do recording early symptoms, the better you and your doctor can manage the problem later.

- Keep written notes on the symptoms. Record when, how long, how painful, etc., for each symptom.

- Note anything unusual that might be related to the problem.

- Measure and record vital signs.

- Add regular updates and watch your progress. Are your symptoms getting better or worse? Continue reading ‘The Wise Medical Consumer: Work in Partnership With Your Doctor’ »

The quality and the cost of medical care depend more on you than on your doctor.
To become a wise medical consumer, start with three basic principles:

* Work in partnership with your doctor and health care team.
* Share in every medical decision.
* Become skilled at obtaining medical care.

By following these three principles, you will gain more control over the quality and cost of your health care than you have ever had before.

Work in Partnership With Your Doctor

Good partnerships are based on a common goal, shared effort, and good communication. If you and your doctor can make these things happen, you will both gain from the partnership. You will get better care and your doctor will practice good medicine.

Five Ways to Be a Good Partner

1. Take good care of yourself. Both you and your doctor would prefer that you don’t get sick in the first place. And if problems arise, you both want a return to good health as soon as possible. Continue reading ‘The Wise Medical Consumer – Part 1’ »

The experts say prevention is better than cure. But what if, prevention wasn’t successful this time? What can you do to go on successfully with cure? Now that H1N1 has widely spread, you might as well catch the virus or may have been infected already. What are the necessary measures that you should do in order to effectively fight the disease?

First, seek medical care. A patient must receive the essential medications (like Tamiflu or Relenza) and checkups to know how much medical attention is necessary. In the hospital or clinic, there are resident nurses and doctors, in their medical uniforms, who will be easily available to care for your health with the needed professional expertise. Whether you need to stay in a hospital or not will depend on how severe the infection has gotten. A patient will be safe to stay at home if the condition is far from severe. He or she will be just given with flu medications and visit from a physician from time to time. Continue reading ‘Deal With H1N1 Wisely’ »