Stick with the doctor who answers your questions

Every patient has the right to ask any and all questions. And the questions can be plenty stupid. Usually, the “stupid” ones are the best ones. A disturbing number of patients report they never felt they were given time to ask all their questions of their doctor. I hear the patients say: “Well, he seemed to be in a real hurry. I didn’t want to bother him.” Or “I just felt my questions were silly. I was so anxious about the procedure I couldn’t think straight. I was numb at the time.”

One of my attendings at the Massachusetts General Hospital had a rule: the patient could only ask one question of him. As soon as the patient started to take a breath and get up the courage to ask something, this particular surgeon would hold up his hand and say: “Aah, aah, aah! Before you ask me anything, I just want to remind you that you should really carefully consider what question is the most important to you…because you’ll only get one.” Few patients ever asked a question. Who could ever be sure what would be the most important one? If any doctor ever says something like that, slam the examination room door in his or her face and head for the nearest exit.

So what’s my practical advice? Always listen first to what your doctor has to say. Tell him or her that you want some time to think things over. Make a follow-up appointment in two days (unless it’s a life-threatening emergency and you need to be operated upon immediately, in which case there’s not a whole lot of time to ask questions). If the doctor seems put off by your request to come back, get out of the office, and find another surgeon. If the doctor says something like: “Okay. But I have an opening in my surgery schedule this week and I was going to put you into that slot. I won’t be able to do that if you want to come back another time,” run out of the office and find yourself a new surgeon. If he or she says: “Fine. I’ll see you in a couple of days,” then you can head home and make an appointment to come back.

During the two-day hiatus, pull your family circle together. Brainstorm a list of all the questions you can. Put them down on paper. Number them; it doesn’t matter how many of them you have. The more, the better. Leave a space of three or four lines after each question so someone can jot down the doctor’s answers as you plow through your whole list. It is far better to be asking questions before the procedure than afterwards.