Craig R. DuBois, M.D.
The Pain Evaluation & Treatment Center
7307 Creekbluff Drive
Austin, TX 78750
512-346-6969
http://www.paineval.net/our_physicians.nxg
Transcript: The physician-patient relationship
You asked me a little bit ago, how do you find a doctor to go to or is the doctor you are seeing the right doctor? And not to be glib but it’s kind of like getting married. You’ve got to date the person a couple of times to figure out if this is a fit. Is it a match?
My wife tells me what to do all of the time. I’m used to it now. If she would have done it when we first started dating, we probably wouldn’t have done it like we do now.
The same thing with physician and patient relationship. You kind of have to fit. If it feels right and it works for you, that’s good. But you also have to constantly be looking at is this working for me? That means not just the guy is nice, pleasant but are you making progress.
I try and tell patients the path you are going to be seeing coming down the road is the path you’ve been on. So if you are going downhill, downhill, downhill and nothing’s changing, you better recognize that something’s got to change.
If this was our home finances and we are just losing money and losing money. We’ve got to change. We can’t keep this path up.
The same thing with health care, if you’re not making any progress. Even me, I have patients that I just get stuck with and its like, I don’t know what else to do. Well, then it is time to make a change. It’s a hard thing to do. It’s very hard. People get comfortable; they get into a pattern will I like this person? That’s OK. There is no harm in getting another opinion and maybe it will be good and maybe it will help. I have people who go elsewhere and they come back. It just happens. We have to accept the fact that I don’t know everything. If I knew, I would be a very, very wealthy and smart guy if I knew everything. It’s not going to happen.
And so what doctors do is what they know. If they don’t know something, how can they possibly do it?
You need to see some alternative ideas. That may mean trying a few things.
The smart patient recognizes that you know you don’t go running out to the end of the cliff and jump off to figure out if there is water on the way down. You have to figure out OK let’s see how this works. If it makes sense then test it out. See if that fits for you.
If somebody is going to see you on the same visit and recommend that let’s go do this real big, expensive, or dangerous or complicated procedure, I think I would stop and think, is that really necessary? If it’s not, if the airplane’s not crashing, why are you going to bail out? Why do something drastic if you’re not in drastic shape?
If you are in one of those crisis cases, that’s a tougher situation. We go to the ER. We need treatment right then. We don’t have a lot of choices sometimes.
But if you’re not in that crisis situation, you’ve got a little time to think about is this the best thing and does it make sense for me. And maybe check it out by seeing somebody else.
And again, always look for new ideas.