About a week ago, I launched an online survey; “What are Ghanaians lying to their doctors about?” The results is quite interesting. A total of 210 participants filled out the survey.

About 53% of the participants were males with the rest being females.

And of 210, about 70% were young adults, aged between 25 -35yrs. This isn’t surprising considering that this age group is the most the active on social media.

About 60% of the participants admitted to having lied to their doctors before.

The reason participants lied to their doctors however varies between the two genders. While most female participants reported that they were uncomfortable around the doctor or they felt judged, most male participants lied because they didn’t think the questions the doctor was asking were relevant.

Ideally, before any doctor starts to ask you questions, he/ she is supposed to establish some rapport. Which means doing a quick introduction to make you feel welcome and relaxed. Establishing a good rapport set the stage for a more fruitful doctor-patient interaction.

Honestly, I understand if Ghanaian patients say they are sometimes uncomfortable around their doctors.

The typical conversation between a Ghanaian doctor and a patient starts with something like this:

Doctor: Yeesss, auntie what brought you here today ( whiles busily trying to open or type something on the computer or write something in the folder), no introduction or greetings ooo, nothing.

Some might even start scolding the patient for coming late or something, even before they ask them any questions.

if this happens, it creates an uncomfortable atmosphere where patients tend to say things that they think the doctor wants to hear, instead of telling the truth for fear of being scolded.

The part I don’t understand is patients lying to doctors because they don’t think the questions the doctor is asking are relevant. Really?, did attend I medical school with you? 😤

After at least 6 years of medical school and several clinical exams, every certified doctor knows which questions are relevant to each patient’s complaints. To you the patient, they might appear irrelevant, but to the doctor they are relevant. It is the job of the doctor to determine what information is relevant, not yours.

So for a patient to just blatantly lie or say anything to the doctor in response to a question, because they don’t think the question is relevant is a terrible habit.

First of all, the literacy rate in this country is low, and even if you very educated, you did not attend medical school. So it is ridiculous for you to determine which questions are medically relevant and which aren’t.

I want to hear some of the questions that a doctor ever asked you during a consultation that you thought were irrelevant.

( please write them in the comment section).

When it comes to sexual behavior, females tend to lie more compared to males. This is a big problem that doctors deal with daily, especially at the emergency room (E/R).

Gynecological history is one aspect of female medical history that can be quite uncomfortable for both the patient and doctor. We usually try to defer this part of the history to the later part of the conversation, by which time the patient would have been comfortable. Sometimes we don’t blame you, for instance, questions like, which day did your last menstrual period start?, unless you are using some app to track your cycle, or recently finish bleeding, you might not remember.

But for questions like, are you sexually active ?, we expect an honest and accurate answers yes or no answer.

Unfortunately, it is a nightmare when it comes to that question especially with teenage girls. They come to the E/R with symptoms classic of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, a life threatening condition whose diagnosis hinges on this yes/no question, and yet deny that they have ever had sex, virgin Mary I guess, LOL😂

As for my brothers, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers, they will come in fuming like a distillery and yet tell you that they quit drinking about 2 months ago. LOL😂.

My people, doctors are only looking out for your good. They are not there to judge your habits, we are not your pastors, and we don’t control the gates of heaven.lol😂

Lying about about duration of illness, seems to universal, sometimes it is as if we are bargaining with the patient to tells us how long they have been sick.

But I think we doctors and nurses contribute to this attitude as well. When patients tell us the actual duration of their illness, we start scolding them, “ eeiiii madam, you have been sick for 6 months? , what were you sitting in the house doing?, why are you now reporting to the hospital ? “

And because of this, you will see a patient who looks wasted and has been ill for at least 6 months, and yet they tell you the illness started last week, lol 😂.

As for herbal medications use, almost every Ghanaian has tried some at some point in time.

Why do Ghanaian doctors get so mad when patients come to hospitals with advanced diseases after they have tried all sorts of herbal medications and prayer camps?

I am guilty myself of blasting patients on several occasions for this same reason. But come to think of it, Ghanaian doctors hardly get time to address patients’ concerns during outpatient consultations, and who can blame them? It is impractical to spend more than 15 minutes with a single patient when you have a long queue of other patients waiting to be seen, so we tend to adopt a more utilitarian approach, seeing as many patients within the available time.

But should that be a good reason not to educate the public on health issues?

Each time you turn on the TV or tune in to a radio station, there is always one pastor or a herbalist ranting about a medical condition he/she has no knowledge of and promising people all sorts of cures. Whiles, we sit in our consulting rooms and laugh at their ignorance, the wrong information they spread is what informs our patients’ health-seeking behaviors.

I think it is about time we health professionals made good use of social media and other news platforms in educating the Ghanaian population on everyday medical conditions.

And until we start doing this, we can’t blame our patients for choosing herbalists, fetish priests, and pastors as their first point of medical care.

And don’t get me wrong, I believe there are countless reasons why people seek alternative medical care, the key among which been cost of care, but we can’t deny the fact that information plays a major role.

The link between handwashing and health was not established until about 2 centuries ago.

In 1846 Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor regarded as the father of hand hygiene, observed that women giving birth in the medical doctor-run maternity wards were more likely to develop fever and die compared to women giving birth in midwife-run maternity wards.

After careful investigations, he discovered that doctors came straight to maternity wards to conduct deliveries after performing autopsies.

He concluded that doctors carried ‘cadaverous particles’ on their hands to the maternity wards and subsequently led to the fever in the women.

Based on this observation, doctors were mandated to wash their hands with chlorine before conducting deliveries. This practice resulted in a drastic fall in the number of maternal mortalities at the facility.

The Galen theory of Miamas ‘foul odor’ as the cause of disease was the belief during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale in an effort to wash off the ‘foul odor’ also implemented handwashing protocols which led to the reduction of infections among the wounded soldiers.

All these were before the Pasteur and Koch’s germ theory of disease. It is unfortunate that even long after the discovery of germs as the cause of disease and the overwhelming evidence of the health benefits of handwashing, there are still some countries especially in Africa where less than 15% of the population have access to handwashing facilities.

The recent COVID pandemic has re-awoken importance of this old but effective preventive public health intervention.

Checkout my dashboard on the access to handwashing facilities and the number of deaths caused by the lack of handwashing facilities https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ekins.kuuzie/viz/AvailabilityofHandwashingfacilities/Dashboard1?publish=yes.

The theme for this year is RISE (Rally in Screening Everyone) #NationalBreastCancerFoundation
https://lnkd.in/dqPYUfPz

Breast cancer awareness month is the time when all efforts are made to educate the public on breast cancer.

Let’s make these public campaigns go beyond the big cities, let the information reach the people at the hinterlands, these are the ones that report to the hospitals with advanced breast cancers after trying all sorts of herbal medications.

Just last week, I had to tell a 32-year-old woman and her family she had an advanced breast cancer, and now has a few weeks to months to live. This is the story in most African countries were majority of breast cancer cases present very late when treatment is not effective or very expensive.

Africa especially therefore stands to benefit a lot from primary and secondary preventive measures. 

Check out my dashboard on some insights on breast cancer stats:
https://lnkd.in/dcQTw4Kx