What You Should Know Before You Schedule Your Next Doctor Appointment

Before we were able to Google our every itch and twinge and ache, we had very different relationships with our doctors.

“In the early years of my career, information was something the doctor had and the patient didn’t,” Dr. Michael L. LeFevre, a professor and physician at the University of Missouri, tells The Huffington Post. Today, he says, patients bring their information to him for his input. “They want my opinion about how good the information is and what it means and how to interpret it for them in their lives.”

Of course, the Internet is rife with misinformation, and sometimes a well-meaning patient will ask for a bout of tests that are completely unnecessary. But at the end of the day, LeFevre thinks this has still resulted in a more empowered patient, one who can arm herself with the tools to help get herself the best care.

Yearly Physical
The recommendation: The Task Force has no official position on the yearly physical.
What the experts say: You probably don’t need a yearly checkup. However, experts argue that without it, patients may miss out on a whole host of screenings, tests, advice and counseling they would not have access to without scheduling some appointment with their docs. Counseling options are recommended, ranging from topics like nutrition and physical activity to breastfeeding to domestic violence, but few Americans would have access to such care without scheduling a yearly physical. “There are preventive services that we are sure work,” says LeFevre. “The question is, how can we best deliver those services? I believe there are services we need to deliver, and often those are best delivered and attended to in the context of a visit where we focus on prevention. It’s hard to incorporate preventive services into sick care. Going in every year may not be necessary, but we do need to make sure that people do get the things that we know work.”

Goldberg agrees. “The guideline may say that you may not need a Pap smear,” she says. “But they didn’t say you don’t have to go to the doctor.”

The Huffington Post