... and if so, how do you think that would affect your health and your relationship with your doctor?
Who's asking? (Besides me....) The Annals of Internal Medicine is doing a survey. They are asking doctors, patients and other industry professionals whether they think patients should have access to their doctors' notes after an appointment, whether patients would actually read them, how that would affect the patients' health and more.
Here's your invitation to take the survey, too. It takes no more than 2-3 minutes, and could affect how you communicate with your doctor, and how you manage your health, for the rest of your life:
Annals Physicians Open Notes Perspective Survey
What would you do? And how would it affect you?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Learn more or join the conversation!
NEWSLETTER | FORUM | BIO | TWITTER | FACEBOOK
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If a doctor knows that the patient is going to read the chart, it will change the data that goes into the chart
Jesse is correct it will change what the doctor writes and what a shame. If doctors are not willing to be direct, candid, open and honest with their patients then why would any patient want to use them? Why would I pay someone to lie to me about my health?
The notion that any information should be kept from the patient is inconsistent with most ethical standards, JCAHO requirements and undermines the patient’s ability to make informed decisions. Yet it occurs daily.
Having worked in healthcare for over 40 years I know that what’s in the chart is not what the patient knows. This lack of participative medicine is one of the root causes of poor healthcare…….patient’s lack of real information and the notion that patients aren’t capable of making medical decisions undermines responsibility for one’s own health. Until the patronizing, medical community starts partnering with patients rather than condescending to them nothing will change.
I agree with Jesse; doctors may be less forthcoming and simply sanitize what they write.
I felt this survey was relatively slanted in the options given in the second question (what do you think the results would be of patients having access to doctor notes). Many of the choices were negative, such as “patients would be offended or confused”. I would have preferred to see the option “patients would know if their doctor understood what they were trying to convey” or something similar. People taking the survey are not as likely to fill in their own ideas as they are to just check off the options given. The wording of a survey can predict the results you will get.