THIS BOOK COULD MAYBE SAVE YOUR LIFE
Dr Phil Hammond, the GP and journalist, believes that our healthcare systems have become so splintered, and care sometimes so poor, that patients now have to take initiatives to protect themselves. It is you, the patient, who has to coordinate your care and carry your records with you; connect with your doctor by fostering a good relationship from the start (hold out your hand to shake when you meet); query the diagnosis (15% of GP diagnoses are wrong) if your thoughts don’t match your doctor’s and ask ‘what else could this be?’; ask what would happen if you did nothing; ask for a second opinion if you remain doubtful, or if the recommended treatment is invasive, toxic, or long-term; check out hospital specialists’ outcome figures; and ask to be referred to a specialist centre for any rare or difficult disease. These and many other initiatives are set forth in this remarkable book, written with humour and humanity.
Dr Hammond helps his readers manage this exacting ‘active patienthood’ by providing references to websites with information about symptoms and diseases; to sites with sets of standards for treatment and care, like NICE’s; and to sites with patients’ discussions of their experiences and tactics. Vivid accounts by patients who secured the treatment and care that they judged best for them provide bracing examples of how to be an active patient. Ideally, patients who are too ill, too inarticulate or too frail to act for themselves should have carers or advocates to act for them.
For this patient–reader, the book raises questions about how far doctors should be responsible for offering good care to their patients and how far patients should be responsible for ensuring that they are offered good care. Is there a dangerous disjunction between patients’ expectation that GPs will tell them what they need to know, and GPs’ expectation that patients will ask? Should doctors as well as patients change their consultation styles? This book is an excellent stimulus to thinking about the problems that both patients and GPs face, separately, and together.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2015