I have always been very interested in health issues. I feel that I lead a healthy lifestyle. Sure, I could stand to lose a few pounds, but on my 5’8″ frame, I am hardly considered overweight.
So, when I had my routine annual physical and fasting blood work a month ago, I had few worries.
Then, the nurse from the doctor’s office called. It was a simple enough message; they are happy with my “good cholesterol”, but my “bad cholesterol is a little elevated”. Ok, I thought to myself…it’s time to take off the extra weight. But I let the nurse continue with their recommendation. And this is what she said: “You know the drill, diet and exercise. Come back in 3 months for a re-test”.
That’s IT!! The extent of their advise to me is that I know the drill. How dare they? There was NO additional educational information provided to me. Do you think they could have thrown a few brochures in the mail to me?? How about referring me to a few websites where I could get appropriate information? No, nothing at all like that. Simply “you know the drill”.
Wouldn’t a better outcome have been “Ann, you probably know all the changes that you need to make, but we recommend the services of a trained health coach to help you set and reach goals to target this specific health condition and get it under control”.
The bottom line is that this is a fundamental problem with our health care system. We don’t focus on prevention and on intervening before a condition worsens. No, we wait until the patient needs medication and/or more serious treatment.
