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How to Get the Right Diagnosis: 16 Tips for Navigating the Medical System
Get the Medical Help You Need
Leverage the system. Many know from experience that the medical system can be difficult to navigate. Take it from Randy Pherson, who struggled with a medical condition for five years before getting a proper diagnosis—and once he did, had to undergo a major surgery to save his life. Because of his experience, Pherson decided to help others facing similar situations. Using his background of analytics from the CIA, Pherson offers his readers precise, analytical techniques for using the system to their advantage.
Learn from the trials and triumphs of others. As traumatic as Pherson’s situation was, it is not an isolated experience. Pherson cites a network of individuals who have tried, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to navigate the medical system. By using their stories as examples, Pherson gives value to their experiences, using the lessons learned to potentially save the lives of others.
Get the help you need and deserve. Because of the sheer number of patients that doctors and medical staff see each day, it can be difficult to get the medical attention that you deserve. Learn how to better describe your pain and the specific questions to ask your doctor to get the proper medicine and treatment you need for your condition.
Take advantage of the advice Randy Pherson has to offer in his book, How to Get the Right Diagnosis, and find:
Eighteen informative and applicable stories from others who have struggled with navigating the medical system Techniques to spur a correct diagnosis and obstacles to overcome when seeking treatment The right questions to ask to ensure you are getting the most accurate information Tips for building an effective partnership with your doctorIf self-help and medicine books such as How Doctors Think, Attending, and The Patient Will See You Now have been valuable to you, then Pherson’s How to Get the Right Diagnosis is the next book for you.
- GenresMedicine
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 14, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 9, 2022
This book written by Randolph H. Pherson will help you to get the best medical help you need. It is written in a simple manner which will be helpful to both the healthcare workers and patients. This book will help you to
1) Advocate for your own healthcare, treat your doctor as your partner in the adventure.
2) Press your doctor to offer a diagnosis and preferably to offer more than one.
3) Focus on how best to describe your symptoms. Let your doctor do the diagnosing.
4) Seek a second opinion if you have any concerns about the proposed treatment.
5) Find creative ways to spur your doctor and the doctor's team to distinguish you from the crowd.
What I learned from this book
1) What is the most important route to effective treatment of a patient?
Technology has unequivocally changed healthcare. It has helped us to give an early diagnosis of a disease, better treatment and early abatement of patients ailments, and increased efficiency. There are certain demerits too for this technological advancement. Some doctors are becoming tunnel-visioned and too much technical. Here the author tells us what doctors should actually focus on for developing an affable personality. He is describing something that every one of us knows already. Still, it is great to be reminded once in a while not to fall into this trap.
"No matter what diagnostic tools that doctors have at their fingertips, the most important route to effective treatment are old-fashioned face-to-face communication, eye contact, and spending quality time with your patients. Specialists should treat the patients and not just order and process test results."
2) What is one of the best ways for doctors to avoid cognitive errors?
We can see the author quoting the idea shared by Dr.Jerome Groopman in his book How Doctors Think. He tells us the importance of developing alternatives to avoid premature closure and being over-influenced by the first impressions.
“The practice of considering alternative explanations against the medical problems is one of the strongest safeguards against making cognitive errors. ”
3) What is google syndrome and Munchausen’s syndrome by google?
If you are a fan of Gillian Flynn's books, you might be knowing about Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. In this internet era, google, one of the best search engines, has resulted in a syndrome called Munchausen's syndrome by google. This is an extremely rare factitious disorder where the patient will be over-dependent on google and uses the information, pictures, X-rays, etc., from google to mislead the doctor to get a wrong diagnosis to get sympathy and attention.
There is a predilection among us to search about everything on the internet. If a patient tries to do internet research regarding diseases and tries to self-diagnose based on few symptoms, the results might be disastrous. This condition where the patient's self-diagnose with their symptoms is considered as google syndrome. This is google syndrome in relation to medical science. Students googling everything compulsively for information is also considered as google syndrome by some people.
"When conducting the internet research, take care to determine the source of information. Some websites that appear to be helpful are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industries or the medical device providers and can have biased information. Figure out who sponsors or funds the websites. This can provide some useful insights and whether to expect bias and how the information is presented. The best strategy is to rely only on data that is supported by multiple independent sources over a period of several years. ”
My favourite three lines from this book
“Five obstacles that a patient can experience are
1) A short time window to see the doctor. (Usually 15 minutes in many countries)
2) The tendency to treat conditions in a serial fashion.
3) Tyranny of specialization.
4) Failure to diagnose.
5) The reluctance to engage and discuss your condition with other doctors.”
"Try to avoid telling the doctor what you think is the problem. Focus instead on describing how you are experiencing the discomfort. What you say will give the doctor invaluable clues what is causing you to suffer."
“I always wondered to what extend House mirrored to what actually happened in hospitals.”
What could have been better?
It is great to see the author analyzing the health care sector in the best way possible. Sadly in few areas, we can see him going for over-analysis and slightly deviating from the main problem.
Rating
4/5 This book will help you a lot to know more and get the best from the health care sector.
February 4, 2024
This book deals with the case where you can't seem to get a good disagnosis after traveling to myriad specialists. The author Randy Pherson is well known for advocating the use of structured analytic techniques in the intelligence community and more broadly beyond intelligence. In this book he uses his own experience sorting out a perplexing medical issue and working with the medical community.
This is an easy read with numerous other examples from his friends.
As good as this book is, I recommend it be read along Dr. Jerome Goopman's How Doctors Think.
This is an easy read with numerous other examples from his friends.
As good as this book is, I recommend it be read along Dr. Jerome Goopman's How Doctors Think.
April 8, 2020
Excellence introduction in critical thinking and intelligence analysis
Easy Read! Brief introduction into Author’s expertise.
I would recommend this book for any one who wants to “take control” for your health and medications. Wish the author can share more pictures and analysis of his journey.
Easy Read! Brief introduction into Author’s expertise.
I would recommend this book for any one who wants to “take control” for your health and medications. Wish the author can share more pictures and analysis of his journey.
March 4, 2020
I received a complimentary copy.
The book offers another prospect of what can happen when you are not properly diagnosed. It offers hope while the author gives great advice to make sure no one will get neglected like he did.
The book offers another prospect of what can happen when you are not properly diagnosed. It offers hope while the author gives great advice to make sure no one will get neglected like he did.
July 6, 2021
A thoughtful plan of how to analyze a difficult to diagnose disease. I'm not sure how much a patient can actually use this with a doctor unless they have a very complicated problem and have a close relationship with their doctor. However, I did take away some tips.
October 7, 2023
Best part of this book -- the epilogue how to advocate for yourself in the medical system. He is correct - a diagnosis first, before throwing everything treatment wise at the wall and see if you get better.
January 3, 2024
Author Randolph Pherson tells his personal journey to finding out what his diagnosis is and uses it to outline and advocate for better relationships between doctors and their patients. It's an important proposal though I find some of it confusing.
February 16, 2020
All I can say is please don't come in to the emergency room and start the conversation by saying you have a "high pain tolerance"
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews