To receive the best medical outcome, you must remain actively involved in your own care. The medical appointment is a perfect opportunity for you to increase your involvement.

Having a system in place to organize health records will be helpful in keeping you up-to-date and involved with all of your care plans. Use the following tips to ensure a much better health care encounter.

Be Prepared for Doctor Appointments

The key to maximize the effectiveness of your medical appointment is to arrive prepared with all of your information. This is especially important when you are taking any medication. Take time to collect, organize and maintain an accurate list of all medication you are taking. Your list should include the names, dosage and frequency. A list of all supplements you take is also important.

This information is especially helpful if you are seeing more than one physician. Many times, physicians may change or discontinue medication and not report this to other physicians that you see. Most people do not take the time for this important task. An empowered health care consumer will always organize health records to get the most from their medical appointments.

Ask Questions

Many patients fail to get the best from interactions with health care professionals because they are not prepared to ask the “right” questions when they go to appointments. Questions provide an opportunity to increase your understanding of the medical process, including plans for treatment and follow-up care.

More effective information-gathering by patients and more conversation by patients with their physician during office visits, relates to better health status. The use of questions enhances the partnership with your physician. This simple intervention should decrease anxiety, increase feelings of control, and lead to greater satisfaction with your office visits.

Take charge of your health care by asking questions. Build a list of questions at ahrq.gov/questionsaretheanswer/. Take these with you to your next medical appointment.

Take Notes

Did you know that patients forget up to 50% of what their medical team has told them after they leave the office? Be sure to take notes about what you talked about during your visit. It may also help to have a family member or friend with you who can assist with note taking. Remember, “The palest ink is better than the most retentive memory.” Confucius.

What is a medical blog?

A medical blog is a web log that discusses various medical topics and provides great resources for all physicians.

What can the best medical blog consist of?

-Discussions of various medical topics

-A forum for all physicians at any stage of training to contribute or ask questions

-Help pre-med students decide if medicine is right for them

-Choosing the right medical school and getting into it

-Resources that help students cope with medical school

-Help medical students choose the right residency

-Education to help residents cope with the tough residency years

-Planning for the job after residency and the skills needed

As I went on my long journey to become a physician, I did not feel that I had the proper guidance. It seemed every time I needed an answer, I had to search deep and wide to find it. Not many were honest about their experiences in medical school, residency, and as an attending. There was so much uncertainty. What do I study? How long should I study? What books are the best? How do you balance medicine and life? These and a ton of other questions were always on my mind. I had to actively go and seek out the answers and a lot of times there was no direction, no clear answer. That’s why I wish I had a medical blog that guided me through my medical education. I feel that everyone that goes through medicine needs some direction. A medical blog is a great solution to this problem. Blogs created for specific topics can really help educate us in medicine.

The first step in decoding the myth is knowing about the differences and similarities in the school of thought that governs the use and practice of the two vastly different approaches to medicine.

Let’s start off with the differences between the two. Conventional medicine focuses more on the symptoms of the illness and treats it according to the manifestations of the illness. When faced with a symptom physicians usually counter it with medications or giving advice on some lifestyle changes that the patient need to adapt for better recovery. Meanwhile alternative medicine practitioners seldomly prescribes medications and would rather treat the underlying cause of the symptom rather than attacking the symptom head on. A practitioner of this school of thought thinks of body as a whole vessel and that a slight disturbance in the system will cause an imbalance to the whole body. As a result alternative medicine doctors find a cure for the cause rather than relieving symptoms. To get in good health they prescribe natural treatments, nutritional therapies and lifestyle changes to get the body back to its optimum level of functioning. They rarely prescribe medications to relieve symptoms.

Don’t get me wrong though, these two schools are both sciences and they both bring results. Which brings me to the similarities between the two. The thing with both of them is, regardless of their differences they want the patient to be at their peak level of functioning. Although nutritional supplements may not relieve a fractured bone as opposed to taking pain meds right away doing both will surely not bring your body any demise.

If you think about it, if you eliminate both the cause and effect of the illness that you have wont that make you feel your best anyway? So if you ask me which is better I would unequivocally say that I will do both to make sure body is in great condition.