How to make your consultation as productive as possible

Let us note right away that if the advice below turns out to be burdensome for you, you can behave during the consultation in the way that is most familiar to you. Then, through the efforts of the doctor, we will still figure out your problem.

To make the consultation as productive as possible, please:

• Give the initiative in the conversation to the doctor. Speak, answering only those questions that the doctor asks you, give answers literally and specifically (only to the essence of the doctor’s questions).

  You will be asked in a certain sequence in order to get the most complete picture of your disease. Don’t start talking about things you weren’t asked about (where and how you were treated, how you were hurt, etc.). Trying to lay out everything that comes to your mind at once will only create confusion in your story.

• At the end of the questioning, you will definitely be able to supplement it with information that you consider important for your disease and which was not touched upon in the conversation. After all, no one deprives you of your words. But first, let me just ask you a question.

  It should be noted that our questioning is carried out so comprehensively that at the end of it the patient almost never finds a reason to supplement it with anything.

• Explanations for some questions during the consultation:

  Where does it hurt? - this means exactly where the pain is and right now, at the present moment (and not “recently”, “before”, “usually”, etc.). It’s better to show where it hurts with the first finger (rather than with an open hand).

  For example, if your knee hurts and you point at the entire knee, then this gives zero information. The doctor already knows where your knee joint is. The question is where exactly does it hurt. And with degenerative-dystrophic diseases of the joints, it never happens that the WHOLE joint hurts.

  The fact is that patients are not used to being examined in such detail as in our clinic. They are often surprised, because previously it was enough to say: “the knee hurts” and that was the end of the examination.

  How long has it been hurting? - this means exactly how many years, months, weeks, days it’s been hurting (and not “long ago”, “recently”, etc.).

  For one person, “a long time ago” is 10 years, and for another it is a couple of months. Therefore, such words carry zero information.