Patient Perspectives: Healthcare and the importance of communication
Delve into the experiences and perspectives of patients, highlighting the crucial role of communication in healthcare.
Transcript
As a woman with inflammatory bowel disease, there's a lot of intersections between OB or GYN
care and Crohn's disease. [MUSIC PLAYING]
With your recount of PCOS and IBD and SVT
and all these different providers that you have to go and connect with, which makes it even more likely
that you're going to encounter someone who treats you in the way that you do. How do you think the health care system needs to even change
its approach of being so siloed that I have to be as literate as a physician in order to navigate it
in the first place? That's a really great question. I think, from my personal experience,
one of the main reasons that I relocated was because there's an inflammatory bowel disease center here that is part of a major hospital network.
There was such a huge difference just from one place to another, because there was communication happening.
I had a doctor when I was living in Connecticut, one of the top gastroenterologists
in Connecticut, because I'd sought that out. I said, OK. I know I want to see a good one. Like I don't want to just see anybody.
And he was a great doctor, absolutely wonderful. But I had to remind him, every time I came to the office, oh, you must be doing OK because you've gained some weight.
I have PCOS. One of the symptoms of that is weight gain, and then you put me on medication
that makes me gain weight for the Crohn's disease. So no, I'm not OK. Like I had to continually like-- every single visit, that's
every three to six months, reminding you not to look at my weight as a symbol of-- versus
now, in a different setting, where I have doctors that are talking to each other, where I went and saw my gastroenterologist and said,
hey, look, I have a lot of health issues that are related to my weight. I've done everything possible to lose weight. What can I do now?
Because I need to do something safely. And they go, you know what? We're going to talk to this doctor. Normally, they don't see patients like you,
but we're going to go ahead and make that effort to make sure you make the connection. He also sees our patients for other things,
and they made that happen for me. But even in that process, it's understanding that there
has to be communication. Not just the patient to the doctor, but one doctor to another doctor.
You brought up another interesting topic of, again, communication being key. Instead of the physician telling you
how you feel, it could have simply been, instead of you must be doing great, it could have been, how are you doing? And having that open-ended conversation
can really help to change the narrative and outcomes tremendously. [SOUND EFFECTS PLAYING]
health care
Browse videos by topic categories
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
ALL