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Doctor/patient communications are not just a courtesy
To the point of my post yesterday (The doctor who wouldn't listen), good communication between doctor and patient isn't just a courtesy... it's often the difference between life and death.
From the Boston Globe recently, A deadly information gap:
The usual experience of a sick older person today is similar to that of an American traveling in a foreign country with no passport, no ability to speak or read the language, and no tour guide, all while deathly ill, often hungry and thirsty, exhausted, confused, and frightened. During my mother's illness, my sister (a lawyer) and I were her "health care navigators,'' and together we managed the treacherous voyage.
In the hospital, after her heart attack, my mother's diabetes doctors weren't allowed to prescribe her medications or diet because she was on a cardiology unit. Despite good intentions, the hospital almost killed her by giving her 32 ounces of apple juice one day, causing her blood sugar to rise to a dangerous level. To compensate, they had to give her a lot of extra insulin, which caused her blood sugar to drop precipitously. At one point they had to resuscitate her because her blood sugar went so low. This happened because the diabetes doctors had almost no real-time way to communicate with the cardiology doctors. They needed a navigator -- a knowledgeable intermediary -- to make sense of the overall picture and connect the doctors to each other.
(Thanks to John A. for the pointer.)
I read an excellent book entitled "How Doctors Think" (2007) by Jerome Groopman, MD. It discussed how doctors think, and therefore some of the strategies that healthcare consumers can employ in order to overcome the limitations imposed by this thinking, in order to maximize the benefit and quality to be derived from the doctor-patient relationship.