I love doctors. I think they are amazing people, and I can't imagine what kind of bravery and compassion it must take to devote your whole life to dealing with sickness. Yet, I'm sure we all know that sometimes doctors and patients misunderstand each other of or have difficulty communicating with each other. I think this happens especially frequently for those in chronic pain. Chronic pain is often (though of course not always) an invisible disease. By this, I mean there is often no outside evidence of chronic pain, so doctors can only take the patient's word that the pain he or she feels is, in fact, real.
With this sort of situation, it is no wonder that miscommunications sometimes occur. I myself, have sometimes gotten off on the wrong foot with a doctor because I feel unsure how to describe my symptoms accurately. Below, you will find a list of three helpful resources t that may help you when trying to talk about pain to your doctor. Please note that I had posted one of these resources before, but decided to reorganize the resources a bit. The other two are new. Click "read more" to see the resources.
1. Things to remember while talking to your pain doctor
http://chronicpainrecovery.com/Article_Talking_to_your_doctor.asp
This website article, written by a doctor, contains a bulleted list of things you should remember while talking to your doctor, and provides the reasons behind each tip. I personally find much of this advice helpful, and the explanations behind each tip help me to understand why my doctors may react a certain way. For instance, I originally felt baffled by the tip that says that chronic pain patients should start the appointment by mentioning an improvement they noticed. I felt resistant to this advice because I do not want to receive too little treatment because I do not properly report my symptoms. However, this doctor helpfully explains that doctors sometimes seem resistant to chronic pain patients because they are very difficult to cure and doctors can get "burnt out" if there is no improvement at all. This doesn't mean you should lie when there isn't much improvement, it just means you may want to consider mentioning any improvement, even if it is rather small. The article contains many other tips like this. While, of course, you should always use your best judgement in how to talk to your own doctor, the new perspectives in this article may help you consider some new approaches.
2. Describing Pain to Your Doctor
http://painreliefclinicmd.com/
I am not endorsing the pain clinic that has this website. However, I thought other pain patients might be interested in their unique method of describing pain. Near the bottom of the page is a box that
describes the L.O.C.A.T.E.S acronym. Each letter stands for a way pain can be described (such as by location, other symptoms, etc). This may help patients that struggle to explain their pain to their doctors or to others.
3. Communicating to Doctor About Pain
This website gives some more simple, straight forward steps that you may want to use while talking to your doctor about your pain. While some steps are naturally intuitive, others, such as telling your doctor if your medication isn't working, may sometimes be forgotten. I myself have sometimes gotten so caught up in discussing the newest symptoms of my pain condition that I do not remember to discuss the new medication.
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