Chapter 7: Top Five Things To Do Before You See Your Doctor

We want to be healed. We want to be heard. We want our doctors to care about doing both. We deserve it.

But healthcare in America can make that challenging for all parties. It’s designed to treat both the patients and the practitioners like nameless cogs in a factory. Intake forms, tests, and preventative screenings take up most of an adult’s annual visit. Doctors have computer screens with lists they need to run through and check off. One of my former primary care physicians (PCP) used to say, “Let’s just get through this BS and then we can talk.”

There’s a saying among patient safety and quality improvement folks: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” American healthcare wasn’t originally mostly about money but it is, now. The corporatization of healthcare, aka the profit motive, has changed the power balance for all of us. Because of this, most PCPs have limited time in the day to examine each patient. Physicians spend 12 to 24 minutes with each patient and…