When managing your RA, communications with your doctor is key. The Arthritis Foundation's CEO and President, Dr. Jack Klippel, answered a few questions about how to keep the lines of communication open.
What types of nonverbal communication does my doctor rely on when determining how I'm doing?
Nonverbal communication – that is what is not said – is very important in helping the doctor to determine how an RA patient is doing. A patient's sense of well being including their mood (anxiety, sadness, depression, hopefulness or hopelessness) as well as level of pain is usually readily evident from their facial expressions and other body language. Simply watching how a patient walks into the room, gets into and out of a chair or examining table are good indicators of how well joints move and how much pain the patient is experiencing.
How do I get my doctor's attention about my "quality of life" concerns when my test results say I'm "fine?"
Blood tests are helpful for many things in rheumatoid arthritis including helping to make the diagnosis, to determine how much joint inflammation is present, and making sure drugs haven't caused problems but they don't help at all in judging quality of life. There are screening questionnaires – often called instruments – which are often helpful in assessing quality of life. The health assessment questionnaire (or HAQ) found in the Let's Talk RA Communication Kit is one such questionnaire but there are others that doctors often use for this purpose. However, quality of life has very different meanings among people with RA and is highly personal. As such, there is no substitute for making sure that how arthritis affects a person's life needs to be part of every conversation with the doctor.
Does my doctor mind when I come in with treatment ideas based on information I gleaned from television or online?
Doctors usually don't mind when patients take an active role in their treatment and ask about treatments they may have heard about on television, online, in magazines or from friends. Creating an open dialogue with your doctor plays an important role in the outcome of drug treatment. Making a treatment choice needs to be something your doctor believes is in your best interest. A problem can arise when the patient wants to repeatedly try new treatments or absolutely insists on or demands receiving a treatment they have read or heard about when the doctor doesn't believe that it's a good idea
The Arthritis Foundation thanks Bristol-Myers Squibb for its support
in underwriting the development of the "Let's Talk RA" program.
