ADVOCACY
Your appointment.
Your body. Your questions.
Practical ways to feel more informed, more prepared and more involved in your own healthcare.
Being a patient can be intimidating. Sitting in front of someone who has years, if not decades, of medical experience, using words and terminology you might not understand, while you're expected to make decisions about your body. All whilst possibly in pain, anxious, overwhelmed or simply trying to understand what you've been told.
Trust me, I've been there.
Which is why it's incredibly important, especially as a woman, to know and understand your body so that you can be involved in making the right decisions for your health.
Advocating for yourself does not mean you know more than your doctor.
It simply means being involved in your own care and listening to your needs. More importantly, you know your body better than anyone else. You know your norms, and you know when something isn't right.
This means asking questions, understanding your diagnosis, understanding why a certain treatment is being recommended and, when necessary, asking for a second opinion.
01
Before your appointment
It can be especially difficult to remember everything during an appointment, particularly one you may have been waiting months for.
What has helped me tackle this is writing things down beforehand:
Your symptoms: what they are, how and when they occur, even if you don't think they're related.
When they started: whether they've progressed or changed and whether anything seems to affect them, such as diet or exercise.
How they affect your day-to-day life!!!
What helps and what makes them worse:including medications you've tried and any side effects.
The questions you actually want answered.
You don't need a colour-coded 47-page symptom spreadsheet. Unless that's your thing lol.
A QUESTION I ALWAYS ASKED
“How do I know when this symptom shouldn't be dismissed? How do I know when it could be something else that's serious?”
Chronic pain girlies will understand. When pain becomes part of your daily life, it can be difficult to know when a symptom is your “normal” and when it needs further attention.
And absolutely do not minimise what you're experiencing.
If your symptoms mean you regularly miss work or university, can't exercise, struggle to have sex, can't sleep or have to plan your life around access to a bathroom, say that.
“I have stomach pain sometimes” doesn't communicate the same thing as “twice a month the pain is bad enough that I can't leave my house.”
02
ASK QUESTIONS
You are allowed to ask questions about your own healthcare.
None of these questions are confrontational. They're normal questions about your own health.
03
“My test was normal. So I'm fine... right?”
Not necessarily.
This is where understanding a little bit of the science can genuinely help you advocate for yourself.
Different medical tests have different limitations. A normal result can be reassuring, but it doesn't automatically mean that every possible condition has been excluded.
Endometriosis is a good example. Current ESHRE guidance states that negative ultrasound or MRI imagingdoes not exclude endometriosis, particularly superficial disease(ESHRE, 2022).
“What does this result rule out, and what doesn't it rule out?”
That's a very different question.
04
If you don't understand something, say so
Medical jargon can make you feel like you're the one who doesn't understand enough.
But you shouldn't need a biomedical degree to understand what's happening to your own body.
You aren't wasting anyone's time by wanting to understand a decision about your health.
05
Bring someone with you
If you're nervous about an appointment, consider bringing someone you trust if you're allowed to.
They can listen, take notes, remind you of questions you wanted to ask and sometimes remember information that you completely forget the second you walk out of the room.
You don't have to do everything alone just to prove you can advocate for yourself.
06
And if you feel dismissed?
Sometimes a healthcare professional may disagree with what you think is causing your symptoms, and that doesn't necessarily mean you're being dismissed. But disagreement and dismissal are not the same thing.
You deserve to have your symptoms taken seriously, to have decisions explained to you and to be treated like a person throughout your care.
If you're told that a particular condition isn't the explanation, it's okay to bring the conversation back to the problem that still exists:
And if you repeatedly feel unheard or don't feel comfortable with the care you're receiving, it's okay to ask about getting another opinion.
Advocating for yourself doesn't mean that a doctor has to agree with you. But you should be able to ask questions, understand the reasoning behind your care and feel like you're actually part of the conversation.
THE POINT
Your appointment. Your body. Your questions.
You don't need to become an expert in medicine.
You don't need to walk into every appointment carrying twenty research papers.
And you definitely don't need to prove that you know more than the person treating you.
But understanding your health gives you the ability to ask better questions, recognise uncertainty and participate in decisions about your own care.
That's the whole point of Endocation.
A LITTLE ENDOCATION NOTE 💜
This page is based on my own experiences and is intended to provide general educational information, not individual medical advice. Healthcare systems and patient rights differ depending on where you live, so processes such as referrals and second opinions may vary.
SOURCE
Reference
Becker, C.M. et al. (2022).ESHRE guideline: endometriosis.Human Reproduction Open, 2022(2), hoac009.
Read the ESHRE guideline →