Treatment Plan Problem: Fill & Download for Free

When I worked on rehab, there was a patient who needed help to turn over in bed. Every time he was turned into his left side, he stopped breathing which scared the hell out of his caregivers. The first step, of course, was to get him off his left side. It turned out that he needed a pacemaker. Once he had that, the problem was solved.Now I am not saying that this is your problem but present it as a possible cause. Quora strangers cannot diagnose you or offer you a treatment plan.See your doctor sooner rather than later. Don't wait until you can’t breathe at all on your left side. Then it becomes a crisis.

Yes I do explain the diagnosis and plan of treatment to majority of my patients.It is my duty as doctor to keep the patient apprised of his illness, the treatment plan, alternative treatments and probability of response to the treatment.Compared to West, in India there are cultural differences in the doctor patient relationship. These includePatients asking the doctor to take the decision for them when given a choice of treatment options. ‘Doctor you do what you think is the best, don't ask us’, this is a standard response from many patients and relatives.Relatives asking you not to tell the patient the diagnosis. This is common in my oncology practice. The relatives feel that the patient will die of shock if they get to know the diagnosis. Most of the time the patient is aware, he or she has come to a cancer hospital and is getting treated for cancer but there is a silence. Everyone knows but behaves as if they don't know.Many times the patients and relatives are unable to understand the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment plan due to the complexity of the disease. It is not correct to expect a lay person to understand something that took the doctor almost a decade of training to understand.As long as things go well for the patient there is no problem regarding what has been told to the patient and relatives. The problems arise when things don't go well as expected. This where there can be misunderstanding between the doctor and patient. It is therefore important to communicate regularly with patients, explain the facts, document all communications and take written consent.

Practically speaking, going through pathology to learn medicine or surgery is absolutely useless and a complete waste of time.Medicine and Surgery are more interested in learning about symptoms, signs and treatment plans, which is different from how pathology looks at the root cause of a problem.For example take infective endocarditis, medicine deals with clinical signs, investigations and treatment plans.Pathology looks at the causes, changes in valves with infection etc which may not be of much help while studying medicine.However you may choose to “refer” the relevant topic in a pathology book if you feel your basic understanding of the subject is incomplete.