YOU are Your Own Best Medical Advocate!

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The's an entire passage in the EMPOWER Yourself book entitled YOU are Your Own Best Advocate (page 31). If those words and the explanation which follows them don't  impress you enough, try reading this article about surgeons who operate on more than one patient in the same session:

Double-Booked: When Surgeons Operate On Two Patients At Once

Rickert and others advise patients who want to avoid overlap to ask detailed questions well in advance and to put their request in writing and on the consent form.

“If you say, ‘I want only you to do the surgery,’ doctors will typically do it,’” Rickert said. “They want the business.”

He also recommends asking, “Are you going to be in the room the entire time during my surgery?” and then repeating that statement in front of the OR nurses the day of surgery. “If the doctor’s not willing to say yes, vote with your feet.”

If a surgeon says he or she will be “present” or “immediately available,” a patient should ask what that means. It may mean that the surgeon is somewhere on a sprawling hospital campus but not in — or even near — your operating room.

There's enough information in that article to make your blood pressure rise startlingly high. Click the link above, and read every word.

And when you're ready to advocate for yourself even more than indicated in the advice above, read what's written in 

There are valid reasons that medical and mental health professionals recommend the book.

Read it. Benefit from it. EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. 





Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism.

Fill your efforts with good sense and self advocacy.