Talking to Your Healthcare Professionals

By Barbara Moore

2 min read

Finding your voice and advocating for yourself when visiting your doctor is important. There are considerable benefits to your level of care if you take steps to be proactive in having conversations.

I have found the best way to do that is by journaling my days and reviewing the changes with my doctor. This helped me find my new normal and better understand my COPD.

The most effective ways to communicate with your doctor

Over the years, I have learned the best ways to communicate and discuss with my doctor. These are my most important reminders.

Numbers are for doctors only

Don’t get caught up in numbers. They are your doctor's interpretation of your condition. Your doctor needs those numbers to treat you, but they should not get to you.

“Doctor speak” is not a language we can understand, so don’t make an appointment about numbers. You are the master of your chronic illness and should be ready to tell that doctor.

Give your doctor a list of your medical team

Ask your doctor to speak with your other specialists. I have a general practitioner, a respirologist, and a cardiologist. I will soon be making an appointment with a rheumatologist.

They could put my life in danger if they can’t or won’t share information. I insist on this at our first meeting and am prepared to move on if that doesn’t work for them.

There is no point in them asking me questions in medical terms. It is much better to talk “doctor speak” to each other.

Write everything down

Preparing for your next doctor’s appointment should start the minute you leave your current appointment. Start a list of what you forgot to tell the doctor about at your current appointment.

You can keep it in notes on your phone or take the time to write it in a journal.

You must be ready to tell the doctor what you have learned from your research. Let them tell you how or if it is important.

Ask if you should be doing more or less of anything. I tracked many things that I assumed meant nothing, but viewing these pages from the past brings back feelings of how I felt then.

Some are good, and some are bad. I found out that my COPD was vastly affected by weather changes.

The best way to find out what was considered normal for me was by journaling my days and reviewing the changes with my doctor. This helped me better understand my COPD.

Get information from reliable sources

I can say firsthand that Google is not a reliable maintenance method for a chronic illness like COPD. While doing your research, question the information.

Although helpful, researchers and medical personnel articles can only point out what is wrong and its technology. If you are looking for ways to understand living your best life with COPD, it should come from a fellow patient.

Take the time to start a conversation with others that have COPD. Join a peer support group, and listen to others, but ask your doctor's opinion before making assumptions about changes you need to make and how you can live better daily.

Editor’s Note: We are extremely saddened to say that on January 7th, 2024, Barbara Moore passed away. Barbara’s advocacy efforts and writing continue to reach many. She will be deeply missed.

This article represents the opinions, thoughts, and experiences of the author; none of this content has been paid for by any advertiser. The COPD.net team does not recommend or endorse any products or treatments discussed herein. Learn more about how we maintain editorial integrity here.

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bin there and dunit Member
 Although the idea of presenting discoveries to your doctor has much to support it one must remember that the pace of medical discoveries is such that even a specialist would have difficulty keeping up. The importance of the microbiome has only been recognised for less than a decade and become important in the last five or six years. What is that? located in the gut it seems to control everything from the brain to perhaps your little toe and it is beyond complex.. UCAL, an important protagonist, seems especially to be trying to study how it can control / improve brain functions like dementia. However it seems that breathing functions may well be controlled from there. I first had symptoms in the summer of 2003 and was diagnosed officially in December 2005. Since that date, twice every day I have recorded my Peak Flow Readings They started off in the high 400 litres per minute and over the years fell to the low 200s by September 2019. At that time, immediately after getting the latest exacerbation put to bed, I took steps to strengthen my immune system. Of course I have had infected cuts etc since but no COPD exacerbations. My peak flow readings went from the 200litres per minute into the high 600s, sometimes the 700s and on occasion hit the machine stop at about 850. It is expensive - over and above standard daily COPD medicines daily it costs me about 40pence (say US$ 0.60 cents) per day Yes, my doctor, COPD nurse and specialist laughed at what I was doing but no longer. I have a fairly normal diet (plus the juices!), go to the gym from time to time and generally lead a life normal for an eighty year old> Hence I agree with trying to discuss everything with your medical professional BUT remember that he or she has to keep up to date with discoveries everywhere in the world expressed in over 500 languages** covering everything from Abbcess to Whooping Cough plus every possible physical injury plus poisons, allergies and conditions which occur perhaps once a year somewhere in this entire world. He or she is on a journey with no end so have mercy on him or her. ** you don't understand? think of North America with Spanish, pre-Spanish invasion languages, English and its variations, Creole, several Eskimo languages, many Native American languages plus those of immigrants, We have schools here where the new pupils speak over 100 different languages and have to learn English