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I’m reading a couple of books on being an empowered patient and I have to say that I am somewhat surprised by the content. It seems that the author of one books wants patients to question everything because physicians play favorites and don’t tell you everything and the other wants patients to stop making mistakes because one study showed that doctors interrupted their patients an average of eighteen seconds into an appointment.

First let me state that medicine is not perfect, that’s why they call it the practice of medicine. I believe empowered patients empower themselves when they work with their healthcare professional not challenge him/her as an adversary. However consider this passage from “The Empowered Patient: How to Get the Right Diagnosis, Buy the Cheapest Drugs, Beat Your Insurance Company, and Get the Best Medical Care Every Time”;

Physicians play favorites. Women are less likely than men to get the right treatment for a heart attack and many other medical ailments.

African-Americans are less likely to get expensive lifesaving treatments even when they have the same medical insurance as white people.

Studies have shown that doctors are less likely to spend time with overweight patients.

Here’s something else your doctor won’t tell you about himself: he almost surely has relationships with pharmaceutical companies that influence the choice of drugs he prescribes for you.

If that doesn’t scare the hell out of people from going to their physicians I’m not sure anything will ! While the findings she uses in her book are from reliable sources (footnoted in the book) I believe that information like this can do a huge disservice to patients.

The author continues on and tells patients not to be good patients, but rather to be bad patients. The “bad patient” keeps asking questions until she understands absolutely everything, even if the doctor or the nurse is visibly annoyed. The payoff for doing this is big: a study published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that patients who clearly understood their discharge instructions were 30 percent less likely to be readmitted to the hospital or visit the emergency department.

In You Bet Your Life! The 10 Mistakes Every Patient Makes (How to Fix Them) the author writes; When we don’t communicate well with our doctors and providers, making sure we’ve explained everything that needs to be explained, then the doctor talks over our heads, interrupts, or rushes us through an appointment. We run the risk of not saying everything we need to say, then not understanding what we’ve been told.

When we don’t understand what we’ve been told, then we don’t know what questions to ask, so we don’t ask them. When we don’t ask questions, then we don’t understand fully what is wrong with us. Further there is a possibility we have not been diagnosed correctly to begin with. When we don’t understand fully what is wrong with us, then we are afraid or unprepared to ask questions about treatment options. We don’t even realize that there are other treatment options that have not been explained.

There is a reason why so many people are using the Internet for health information. It’s because they want to be empowered patients and understand what is happening, why and their treatment options. There is also a reason why physicians don’t and can’t spend time to really explain different treatment options to patients. It has to do with trying to make their practice profitable.

I’m sure there are some physicians who might prescribe medications because they are on drug company payrolls but it has been my experience in over 10 years of healthcare that this is in fact very rare. If the author thinks that physicians are willing to sell themselves to drug companies at the expense at what’s best for patients than I am afraid she has a lot more problems than taking care of her health.

Patients have become consumers of healthcare. This means they want to understand their options and engage their physicians in dialogue when it comes to treatment options. Research has continually shown that patients trust their physicians to recommend the best healthcare treatment options. A patient is better served when she/he understands what, who, what and why not when they treat their HCP as an adversary who needs to be questioned at every turn.