The secrets you shouldn’t keep from your doctor |
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The secrets you shouldn’t keep from your doctor
Most of us hide stuff from our doctors. But there are things you should never lie about.
The secrets you shouldn’t keep from your doctor
Most of us hide stuff from our doctors. But there are things you should never lie about.
Let’s be frank: When you go to see your personal doctor or stop at an urgent care for a quick visit, you probably don’t always tell the physician the whole truth and nothing but the truth. According to one major study, between 60 and 80 percent of US adults have reported they withheld at least one pertinent piece of medical information from a healthcare provider during a visit.
And we do it for the most natural and human reasons. The most common explanations that patients gave for declining to disclose relevant information were not wanting to be lectured, not wanting to be judged for their behavior, and being embarrassed. Women, young people, and the people with the worst health (according to their own self-report) were most likely to hold something back.
If you have faced discrimination from society because of who you are, you may feel more distrustful of the medical system and its practitioners. Research has found that people who have faced prior discrimination are more likely to withhold information from a healthcare provider. And doctors sometimes earn that distrust, especially when it comes to women and people of color. Our era of do-it-yourself medicine only adds more barriers between patients and their doctors. One survey found that more than 40 percent of US adults who had used alternative or complementary medicine did not disclose that fact to their primary care doctor.
Doctors bear some of the blame for this disconnect. But, at a time when people say they want more agency over their healthcare, the rest of us have to hold up our side of the conversation, too. Here’s how to think about how honest you should be with your doctor.
The key question you should ask yourself about being honest with your doctor
There is no shame in feeling uncomfortable sharing information with your doctor. I spoke with Dr. Ronald Epstein, a professor of family medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center who has........