Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Patients today...

i met one of my patients in the clinic. i got almost fainted after i saw his lipid profile, wah! the cholesterol level was very very high leh. flipping over his medications record, there was a lipid reduction medication on board. aiya...

"uncle, apa macam? taking your medications or not?"
the patient was so happily and answered, "ya, i took all the medications but not the cholesterol one. bad one, of course i stopped it"

eh, question marks in my mind...
"why leh?"

"why didn't you tell me the lipid lowering medications will cause the liver dysfunction. so scared and i have to stop taking it." then he mentioned all of these he got it from internet. he did a lot of studies and research about all his medications.

aiyooo! it is so hard to take care for the New-Age people. unlike old times, all patients will just follow all the instructions from the doctors. either they really trust the doctors full-heartedly, or they are just obedient. no way now! the patients will find everything from here and there from various sources, 'teaching' doctors back with his 'knowledge'. if started one treatment, the next day they will question you back for other options. think about it, how did the old-time doctors response if they met this situation now?

lucky enough, i'm not so dumb onto internet. searching here and there, to find the answers from the patients. and show the reliable sites for them as proper channels to get guidance.

for this patient, i got to explain to him the pro and con of taking the lipid lowering drugs, showed him a few web sites of good studies, and justified the proper usage of the medication. yes, he got convinced...

so hard! to handle the New-Age patients...
even harder, to make myself New-Age!

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