Lying to your doctor is a risky and suicidal behavior. You won’t be prosecuted, but it might cost you your life. For some reason, my Ghanaian patients will rather choose to preserve their self-esteem than tell the truth.
And yet they are the very people who go around saying doctors are misdiagnosing patients.
Do you drink? No ( meanwhile, the night before he/she was out binge drinking at the club)
Do you smoke? I quite 2 months ago,
Are you sexually active ? Nope (And yet you are bleeding from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy)….lol
I think sometimes patients don’t appreciate the importance of the questions we ask them, all they care about is medications and symptomatic relief.
I recently had an encounter with a patient in the consulting room who was only particular about me giving her injections rather than answering the questions I asked her. And you could tell from her tone she didn’t want to be bothered with questions.
The treatment that you get as a patient depends on what is wrong with you, so for instance, if you report to the OPD with headache and vomiting, the doctor could just write you a bunch of medications to relieve you of these symptoms. But he/she won’t be doing you any good, because as soon as you run out of the medications, you will be back with the same symptoms or worse. The reason is that the cause of your symptoms has not been dealt with.
Unfortunately, doctors are not magicians, we use the good old scientific method in determining the cause of your problem. This starts with data collection, by asking you questions, which sometimes seem irrelevant and unrelated to your symptoms, we are able with the help of a few laboratory investigations figure out the cause of your problem, and in most cases, once the cause is known the treatment is straightforward.
In as much as it is the responsibility of your doctor to ask the right questions, it is your responsibility to provide him/her with the right information.
So when you provide your doctor with the wrong information, you get the wrong diagnosis and the wrong treatment, “garbage in, garbage out”. Lol 😂
I have an issue with the motto of the Ghana Health Service; “your health our concern “, honestly I think each person’s health should be their concern, healthcare workers are merely there to guide you in achieving optimum health by providing you with sound and evidence-based advice (primary /preventative intervention is the goal), it is unfortunate that all we do here is secondary and tertiary interventions ( people only go to the hospital when they are sick ).
Ghanaian patients, please know the truth and the truth shall give you a chance of getting quality healthcare.
And also know that doctor-patient confidentiality protects you and that every piece of information you share with your doctor is kept confidential.
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