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BEING PROACTIVE IN YOUR HEALTH CARE
Your personal involvement in your own wellness is critical. Taking a proactive approach to practicing preventive behaviors can go a long way toward giving you a long and healthy life. Sometimes, however, regardless of the steps you take to care for yourself, you still get sick. At such a time, it is important that you continue to be actively involved in your care. The more you know about your own body and about factors that can affect your health, the better able you will be to communicate complete information to your doctor. It also helps you make informed decisions and to recognize when a certain treatment may not be right for you. The following points can help:
- Know your own and your family\'s medical history.
- Be knowledgeable about your condition - causes, physiological effects, possible treatments, prognosis. Don\'t rely on the doctor for all this information. Do some research.
- Bring a friend or relative along for medical visits to help you review what the doctor says. Or take notes if you go alone.
- Ask the practitioner to explain the problem and possible treatments, tests, and drugs in a clear and understandable way.
- If the doctor prescribes any medications, ask for their generic names so that you can pay less for them.
- Ask for a written summary of the results of your visit and any lab tests.
- If you have any doubt about the doctor\'s recommended treatment, seek a second opinion.
- If you will need to take a prescription medication for an extended time, ask for the maximum number of doses allowed by your plan if you have a small pharmacy copayment.
After seeing a health care professional, consider these ideas:
- Write down an accurate account of what happened and what was said. Be sure to include the names of the doctor and all other people involved in your care, the date, and the place.
- Shop around drugstores for the best prices in the same way that you would when shopping for clothes.
- When filling prescriptions, ask to see the pharmacist\'s package inserts that list medical considerations concerning the medicines. Request detailed information about any potential drug interactions.
- Write clear instructions on the label to avoid risk to others who may take the drug in error.
Just like you, doctors are human. Their decisions are based on the best information they have available to them and may be influenced by a number of factors - workload, limited information, personal views. Therefore, in addition to following the practical steps listed above, being proactively involved in your health care also means that you should be aware of your rights as a patient. The following are the basic rights of all individuals seeking care from a health care professional.
1. The right of informed consent means that before receiving any care, you have the right to be fully informed of what is being planned, the risks and potential benefits, and possible alternative forms of treatment, including the option of no treatment. Your consent must be voluntary and without any form of coercion. It is critical that you read any consent forms carefully and amend them as necessary before signing.
2. You have the right to know whether the treatment you are receiving is standard or experimental. In experimental conditions, you have the legal and ethical right to know if the study is one in which some people receive treatment while others do not in order to compare the results and if any drug is being used in the research project for a purpose not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
3. You have the right to privacy, which includes the source of payment for treatment and care. It also includes protecting your right to make personal decisions concerning all reproductive matters.
4. You have the legal right to refuse treatment at any time and to cease treatment at any time during the course of care.
5. You have the right to receive care.
6. You have the right to access all your medical records and to confidentiality of your records.
7. You have the right to seek the opinions of other health care professionals regarding your condition.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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