Fifteen minutes may not seem like a lot of time to cover critical information that may be important to your very survival. But a lot can happen during a fifteen-minute office visit. Unfortunately, a lot of time can also be used up by relatively trivial matters.
From the doctor's point of view, it sometimes may take about three minutes to cover the strictly medical procedures. A schedule for a chemotherapy program, the dosage and the side effects can be covered quickly. But a doctor has to deal with what happened last week, how you felt about things, what your hopes and fears are—all the secret things going on beneath the surface that might be important. So the other 12 minutes are often given to psychological evaluation and counseling, rather than purely technical matters.
All questions and problems are in some way important, but some are more important than others. And if you want to help yourself get the best chance of an effective review, there are certain rules or guidelines you should be aware of.
• Focus on the matter at hand Doctors try to take care of the most pertinent issues first. The doctor's
most important questions will be about what's happening with you right now. Do you have a sore mouth? Are
you losing weight? Do you have any major complaints? Do you have diarrhea? What's new since your last
visit? The doctor then has to try to analyze and make sense of what's changing. Doctors are always trying to
anticipate changes so they don't have to play "catchup." Until you have a problem, your doctor can't solve it.
So give the clearest, most detailed answers you can without holding anything back. It might help if you keep
notes of significant symptoms or events that you noticed between visits.
