Have you had a bad experience with doctors? Are you nervous about your next doctor’s appointment? Whether you are seeing your GP, psychiatrist, obstetrician, or neurosurgeon, there are many factors that will affect your experience of your consultation. How nervous are you and how much time will you have? How much will it cost? Will you trust the doctor?

Many questions may be swirling in your mind. These can affect your experience of the consultation so much so that you may not retain all the information. This article may help prepare you for your next important consultation with a doctor so that you can get the most out of it.

If you are there to get an opinion about your medical condition, make sure you understand what the condition is and what routine treatments for it look like. This way, when you have an appointment with your doctor, the medical jargon they use will make more sense. This will mean less time for the doctor explaining the basics and more time to answer your thoughtful questions.

Before your appointment, write any questions that you have down. This can serve as a prompt so that if you are swayed by the conversation in the consultation, you have a reference guide that will ensure your questions are answered.

These two agendas are supposed to serve you, and at some points, they can overlap, but at others, they can clash. For example, your doctor may recommend an operation that either costs a lot of money or requires a long wait on a public hospital list. You either cannot afford the private operation or require the specific date of the public operation with a long lead time so that you can tell work, organize care for your three children, and arrange assistance for your elderly parents. The operation may require six weeks of recuperation, which you cannot afford because you only have a week left of annual and sick leave.

This is just one example, but it is common that the doctor’s recommendations and what can actually happen in your life do not overlap. When a mismatch like this happens during a consultation, the relationship between you and your doctor can, at best, become confronting, and at worst, break down. A breakdown in the relationship may be preventable if both you and your doctor arrive with similar attitudes.

After the appointment with your doctor, you may require time to process what you heard. Do you trust the advice? Do you still have more questions? Will you follow the recommended treatment plan?

A lot of the time, the consultation will be fruitful, and you feel confident about your medical condition or the plan to treat it. Sometimes your doctor can exceed your expectations, and this is a win! You may establish a great relationship with this doctor and use them for years to come.

Sometimes you do not gel with your doctor or do not agree with their advice. This happens, and although it can be expensive and time-consuming, it is also a learning opportunity. You can use what you liked and did not like about your doctor’s appointment and find another doctor to help guide you through the next phase of your treatment.

You may also write them a review! This can be helpful if you express what you liked and disliked about the experience so that others get a better idea of the doctor.

Doctor-patient relationships are fundamentally human relationships. They can be quick one-offs that can serve their purpose or create a negative outcome. They can also be complex and nourishing relationships that last years. It all depends on what you want and need.

You do not have to endure paternalistic medicine anymore, those days when your doctor told you what to do, and you revered them. If that is what you like, then there is a doctor for you. If you prefer someone who you can collaborate with, there is also a doctor for you.

With the right doctor, you can have a beneficial doctor-patient relationship. One that is two minds bringing their cumulative years of experience into a specific moment in time to achieve a mutually agreed and constructive outcome.

Like all human relationships, this is not always possible, but it does not mean we should not try. So, if you have had a bad experience with a doctor in the past, remember, you have also met horrible and lovely people in your personal life and will continue to experience a mix of both.

You can consider reading this article as the pre-work for your next appointment. It may just be the trigger to get you the most out of your next doctor’s appointment.