You & Your Doctor

October 3, 2012

Interview with Dr. Peter Ubel, author of the book Critical Decisions: How You and Your Doctor Can Make the Right Medical Choices Together

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Mike Carruthers:
Medical decisions, we used to leave it to the doctor to decide what we should do.

Dr. Peter Ubel:
Doctor knew best and around the mid 70tys there was kind of a revolution in medical care where we realized that patients had a role to play in these decisions. But no one has really taught either doctors or patients how to work together.
 

Dr. Peter Ubel, author of the book Critical Decisions, tells the story of a patient who came to him with prostate cancer.

Couldn’t decide whether to have surgery, radiation or just watch things and see what happens. Came to me and asked me for my advice I refused to give it to him. I said the right choice depends on your values. And he nodded to me and looked to me and said, “Ok then Doc what would you do if you were me?” And that’s the problem I didn’t know what I would do if I were him because I wasn’t him. And it’s hard sometimes for each person to understand the other one well enough to make good choices together.

What that means says Dr. Ubel is that medical advice from your doctor should come as a result of a conversation between the 2 of you.

If the modern patient has any job it’s to tell the doctor something about yourself that will help your doctor give you good advice.

Because ultimately what happens to you is up to you.

And I think it’s when the doctor starts prescribing a pill or telling you you need an x-ray then maybe your antenna need to shoot up a little bit and just say, “What will the purpose of the x-ray be, are there alternatives to the x-ray”. Just some basic questions like that shouldn’t take your doctor more than 90 seconds to give you a better explanation but you deserve it.