Working With Our Health Care Team - And becoming a better self manager.

Whatever age we are, if we are just unwell or have chronic health problems, we will at some point, whether we like it or not, will have to engage with health professionals to take steps to get well again. For some this may be easy but for others it may be much harder to do for any number of reasons such as fear of the unknown, social reasons, fear of clinicians or simply just can’t be bothered. Whatever the reason, ultimately we just have to do it or suffer the consequences, so how we do this is what really matters.

In the past people like doctors, nurses, specialists etc were held in awe, they were seen as a breed apart and so very different to “us”, this over the years has built up a so called barrier between “them and us” – we must not question “them” but do what we are told for our own good. Fortunately this is now changing – we recognise that this is not the case and that we are all in the health quest together with one common goal and that is to maintain and improve all our health outcomes together, in other words we are a support team! We all know that for a team to function well all the team members have a role to play and also responsibilities to each other and of course all this applies to “us” as a member of the team.

Our role in the “Team” is vital; our future health depends on how well we play our role. As a team member we must be prepared to take on a very proactive role in our health, this means listening to and acting on the advice we get from all the other team members – the health care team. For them to be able to provide the services we expect we have a responsibility to answer their questions truthfully, undertake tests etc, ask questions regarding treatment etc and also monitor and feedback our progress. If we fail to take on all these responsibilities then we cannot expect the results to be what we expect and we let the team down.

As part of this team we take on the role of self management of our health, we become more aware of our health and its treatment, we make informed decisions based on the team’s knowledge and we monitor and report back to the team on our progress and symptoms and this in turn ensures the continuity of health care.

Health services are not perfect, we will all encounter problems at some point in time and often we will want to blame others for these problems. If we really look at how these problems sometimes arise we will often see that we may have missed an opportunity to prevent it happening. Perhaps we could have communicated better, we may not have asked for clarification on a treatment or medication, we may not have been vigilant in how we took our medication, there are many other things we may not have done and all of them can and do affect our health outcomes. It is important to not only to get to know your health care team members but also get to know your health service too. Our team will know some of the service systems but will probably not know all of them, we as a member of the team need to take on the responsibility of finding out what services there are and how we can best access them in order to achieve the highest outcome for ourselves – we cannot leave it to others, this is what self management is all about.

If you would like to learn more about becoming a better self manager of your own health you might like to consider joining in a Pathways To Healthier Living program (Stanford Self Management Course (CDSMP) in your own area). The course is there to help you in many ways – for more information click here.