Creating a good team culture, and optimizing my personal performance as a good patient

What we’d most want our friends and loved ones to know

When you need treatment, you deserve a physician who will appreciate your beliefs and values, and who will offer you choices. Someone who will focus on personalized, precision care that is specific to you and your situation. Someone who will be candid with you about the pros, cons, and costs associated with different treatments, and the different places where the same treatment can be received.

And most important, someone who you trust and whose advice you respect.

And finally, someone who will respect that the final decisions about your care are yours. Not theirs.

How we might help

Understand how to influence the basis of your relationship with your providers to create an environment where you can receive care and treatment that is personalized for your unique needs, beliefs, and circumstances.   At the end of this chapter, you will understand how to communicate better with your providers and and know what questions to ask and information to offer so you can fill your role as a ‘model’ patient, and in doing so make it easier for your providers to deliver the best possible advice for your unique needs.

Some areas we’ll cover

What’s the difference between a paternalistic and collaborative relationship?

How can I be a ‘good patient’ during a visit (in the eyes of my provider), so that we can have a constructive, collaborative relationship?

What is my provider’s perspective of our relationship?

How do my providers go through the diagnostic process, and how do they deal with uncertainty?

When my visit is complete, how should I request an updated Patient Summary, Continuity of Care document, or Visit Note, and what should I do with them?

When my visit is complete, what are my options for sharing the patient satisfaction, medical, and financial outcomes of my visit with others?

How well could collaborative relationships really work?

Next:  The key to effective teamwork, and to filling your role as the best possible patient, is to create the right culture.  You and your physician(s) need to work as a team – read on to learn the value of a collaborative relationship.