How Can I Get The Most Out Of The Work I Do With My Doctor?

— -- Question: How can I get the most out of the work I do with my doctor?

Answer: A lot of patients will ask, "How can I get the most out of the work that I do with my doctor?" And I think one of the answers really relates to being instructed about what it is that this doctor-patient interaction should be about.

If you think about it, when you're meeting with your doctor, the task that you want to be focused on is "How can we make a higher proportion of wise decisions amicably?"

Now that is something that means we're not necessarily going to get it right at the beginning, but we're going to use an approach to work to agree about not just what the right thing to do might be, but how we're going to measure the results. Just the way in a blood pressure clinic we would put a blood pressure cuff on somebody's arm and measure whether the treatment for their high blood pressure was working and direct the care accordingly, it will turn out that we can use very much the same approach in managing mood elevation and depression by actually measuring the results over time and seeing what is working for you.

You will be able to make progressively wiser decisions for you as an individual. Working with your doctor to do that in an amicable way often requires little more than just agreeing to select objective measures for how well you're doing in response to any treatment you might choose.

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