The Medical Consumer's Advocate

How to Use the Symptom Guide

The goal of the Symptom Guide is to improve communication between you and your physician.More specifically, the Symptom Guide:

• will help you give your doctor the information needed to make a diagnosis.

• will alert you to some of the warning signs that indicate an urgent need for you to seek medical attention.

• may give you some insight into the controversies regarding the diagnosis and treatment of your problem.

• will let you know what to expect from your doctor with regard to examinations, further tests and possible treatments.

• will give you some food for thought.Perhaps you feel frustrated in your attempts to find an effective treatment; if so, the Symptom Guide may lead you to explore (with your doctor) alternative explanations for your symptom.

 

So... how best to use the Guide?

Literacy is a wonderful thing, ain't it?The best advice we can give you when it comes to using any of the information offered by the Medical Consumer's Advocate, including the Symptom Guide, is that you keep pen and paper handy while you read.Take notes!Unless you have a memory like a bear trap, you will probably forget to give your doctor a bit of important information, or ask him a key question... especially if you or your doctor are in a hurry.

You may get some sense of the urgency of your condition by reading Do I need a doctor?If any of these symptoms are present, take note of them, and see your doctor as soon as possible.

The information given in What your doctor needs to know can help you put together a clear, concise medical history with respect to your current problem.(Bear in mind that a thorough doctor wants to know a whole lot more about your medical history; if you have not already done so, you may wish to read Ten easy things you can do to help your doctor take a better history on the Medicine 101 page.

What to expect from your doctor is, as information goes, a bit of a loaded weapon.At the very least, this information may (as the title suggests) give you some idea of what to expect, and this may help lessen any anxiety you may happen to have.

It has not escaped our attention that the reader may develop expectations as to what a thorough doctor would do during and after the examination.Similarly, while we hope that the information contained in What your doctor needs to know will be used to improve communication between you and your doctor, we realize that it may also be used to test your doctor's ability to take a history.

We hope that by providing you with a Differential diagnosis we will encourage conversations between you and your doctor.This may be particularly helpful if you feel as though you are at an impasse and you are in search of new ideas.In such a situation, there are two possibilities: first, that your doctor's diagnosis is correct, but (for a variety of reasons) the chosen treatment is not effective.The second possibility is that the diagnosis is incorrect.In this situation, knowledge of the differential diagnosis may lead to the exploration of alternative explanations for your problem.