Thursday, January 27, 2011

Talking to your doctor

I've blogged before about how I question the conventional wisdom that we need user fees and such for medical services because people are apparently going to the doctor for foolish things.

But then I see things like this:

The new study shows, however, that there are significant gaps in preventive care.

Only two in five people over the age of 45 reported having talked to a health professional about what they could do to improve their health or prevent illness (measures like quitting smoking, increasing exercise or limiting alcohol consumption).


Why on earth would I need to talk to my doctor about that? I already know I shouldn't smoke, should exercise more, and should probably drink less.

As I also think I've mentioned before, I've been watching my sodium intake after noticing that my body reacts negatively when I eat too much high-sodium foods. When I've mentioned this IRL, people of older generations have asked me "Did your doctor tell you to cut back on the sodium?" No, I figured it out myself. Why would I need a doctor to tell me a readily observable correlation?

Even last time I had a bad cold (lasted the better part of a week, took a day and a half off work), elders asked me if I'd been to a doctor. Why would I go to a doctor when a good night's sleep and drinking plenty of juice is slowly but surely doing the job?

Do people who are older than me have less medical self-knowledge or something? Shouldn't they have more, what with all their life experience and growing up in an era where they had to pay to go to the doctor?

If my own observations here do end up being indicative of a larger pattern, maybe medical costs will drop and our health system will become more sustainable in the long term, as the percentage of the population able to work out their own preventive and self-care increases.

4 comments:

TravelMaus said...

Having just spent a fair amount of time with older people over the last few weeks ( mother included) it seems to me that older folks are sometimes attention seekers and going to the doctor gives them that attention. Some are lonely and again, a visit to the doctor gives them the attention they seek. It's wrong and we're all paying for these visits, but I'm not sure I know how to suggest the cycle be broken.

impudent strumpet said...

Do you think this behaviour increases with age, or is it something that has always been present?

laura k said...

I think it's a mistake to believe this correlates with age based on such a tiny sample size. I have co-workers my own age and younger who are the same way.

I don't know if it's attention-seeking behaviour. To me it sounds more like a combination of ignorance and lack of confidence in one's own opinions - an over-reliance on authority.

impudent strumpet said...

Yeah, I was actually talking today to someone who's younger than me and wants to go to the doctor for something that I'd at least start trying to address with a $5 drugstore purchase, so I don't know what's going on.