You Are Responsible for Your Health

Even if you don’t have high medical literacy, at least have some situational awareness. When I ask you about a recent admission, at least be able to tell me the highlights. When I ask about past medical history (PMH), please don’t start with… “In 1999 I had…” The farther away the thing was, the less important the details are. Of course it’s important to know you had a heart attack and had stents placed 20 years ago. What I DON’T need to know is who did it, the exact date, all the details of your ER visit and hospitalization, or what meds you were started on at that time.

The precise timing of things that happened within hours to days before I see you is important information. The timing gets less important the farther back in time that thing happened. E.g., if you just had cardiac bypass surgery 4 days ago and now you have chest pain again, the potential disasters are different than if you had the same surgery 15 years ago. Abdominal pain a week after an appendectomy or recent bout of diverticulitis is different from abdominal pain 2 years after the surgery.

Being completely unaware of your medical issues is detrimental to your health. The medical issue was bad for your health. Being unaware of what was done about it and is being done for it is worse.

If you are on medications, you have medical problems. I routinely ask about medical problems, which patients deny. My next question is asking about medications, and suddenly they list double-digit numbers of meds. I have started to just ask about medications first; I can deduce the medical problems from there.

Patients tend to mix and match names of medications. For example, amlodipine, lisinopril, and metoprolol are 3 of the most common medications for HTN. None of them are words common to the English language, and for some reason, patients tend to combine them in creative combinations and mispronounce them:

Metolopine

Metropol

Metropo-pril

Lisinopine

Lisinoprol

Amlodipril

Amlodiprol

Another common answer to “What medications do you take?” is “the little green one” or “it’s a blue one about this big” as the patient demonstrates with their fingers the approximate size of the pill. That doesn’t help me.

I asked Grok how many different preparations there are for the 20 most prescribed drugs in the U.S.

“The combined total number of different forms/preparations routinely available is 3,495.”

So you can understand why describing the size and color doesn’t really help me.

My point is to know about your health. Know what medications you are taking and what they are for. Ask questions of your doctor(s). Ask what conditions you are being treated for, what the medications do, what the side effects are, how long you need to be taking them. Ask what procedure or surgery you had done. If you don’t understand, ask more questions.

Your health is your responsibility. You ignore understanding it at your own peril.