How to Prepare Before a Medical Meeting: 13 Tips Provided by a Doctor

As a society, it is important to know how to prepare before a medical meeting, not because it makes you a better person or wiser, but simply because there are many things that are often overlooked and could make a significant difference in your health. I don’t mean to say that it’s a bad thing not to know or that people should already know their diagnosis when they visit the doctor. After all, people go to the doctor because they don’t know what’s wrong with them. However, as a doctor, I can tell you that there are some things that ALL of us should pay attention to in order to make the consultation easier and to help us receive the best treatment options for our condition.

Why is it important to know how to prepare before a medical meeting?

One of the reasons I started this project is that health is a topic that involves all of us, from the government and the private sector to healthcare professionals and ultimately the people who are the end-users of our services when they become patients.

I believe that patients often underestimate the importance of this aspect, and it’s not anyone’s fault; there simply isn’t enough information to help us understand the process by which doctors arrive at diagnoses and, consequently, treatment options. In this list, we will explain in detail how to prepare before a medical consultation and why these steps are relevant.

List of 13 tips on how to prepare before a medical meeting

1. Prepare a list of medications to which you are allergic

Generally, these lists are not very long, usually one or two medications to which people are allergic. Here, it is very important to remember two things: 1) whether it was an immediate allergy (within an hour) or if it occurred after an hour, and 2) if it was a severe reaction (such as difficulty breathing or organ damage or after-effects).

We ask you to make a list because, often, people come to the consultation, and when we ask about allergies, they respond with, “Hmm, yes, one pill gave me an allergy… I think it was an antibiotic.” And obviously, we won’t know which one they are referring to because there are hundreds of antibiotics on the market.

2. Main symptom: the reason for your medical consultation.

This is the most basic information you should explain to the doctor. It could be that you have more than one primary reason for the consultation; in this case, you should mention all the issues for which you are seeing the doctor. For example, someone might go for abdominal pain that has been ongoing for many months, but what prompts the visit is that it worsened the day before or is now accompanied by another symptom.

Please don’t be the kind of patient who goes to the emergency room at 3 a.m. for pain that has been going on for months; go sooner. But getting back to the point: the reason for the consultation leads to many of the questions we will ask you and also helps us focus on the most troublesome problem.

3. How long have you had the symptoms before the medical consultation?

This applies to any condition or symptom. Almost always, we ask patients about the duration of their pain, and they reply, “It’s been a while.” Doctors often assume that you know the importance of defining something we call the “duration of evolution.” It’s not the same when a skin blemish appeared in one or two days as when it has been growing slowly for years.

What’s relevant here, and what we might ask you to do, is to give us an idea in days, months, or dates of when this or that thing first appeared. This helps us narrow down the disease a bit more, and we can ask other questions to clarify the consultation further.

4. Specific treatment for your condition before the medical consultation

Sometimes people say, “I took a medication, they injected me, but I didn’t improve” (clarifying whether there was improvement also matters). Then we ask, “What medication was it?” And they answer, “I don’t remember; it was a white pill with green and white packaging. It was small, but I don’t remember the name.” So, they give us many clues about the medication, but almost all pills are small, white, round, with white and green packaging.

The importance behind this that you should know is that it helps us with the diagnosis by reducing the options of what Mr. Ramiro might have if he responds to one medication or another (this also applies when they don’t respond to another medication). Another relevant thing for us to know is whether the treatment given was correctly prescribed in terms of dose, duration, and the specific condition you have.

5. If you had these symptoms before

Like many of the questions we ask, this is aimed at finding out if it could be a disease that occurs in episodes, if the symptoms are familiar to you or if there were previous indications of the same problem.

Many diseases, such as appendicitis, may cause pain only once in your life if they require surgery. There are other diseases, such as knee pain, where if it hurts once a year, it’s probably normal because humans experience occasional body pain. But if it hurts every day, we will think about a degenerative knee condition.

6. List of questions for the doctor

7. Documents such as test results, prescriptions, discharges, summaries, or anything related to your medical history before the medical visit

Sometimes people come to the consultation to request certificates or documents issued by a doctor for legal purposes, driver’s licenses, or many other situations where they need to prove that they have a specific condition.

An example of this is when people request a medical certificate that includes their blood type, but when we ask for a certified laboratory result of their blood type, they don’t have it. I mean, it’s not like we don’t believe them when they say they’ve been A (+) their whole lives, and their child and their whole family have the same blood type, but put yourself in our shoes; I don’t think you would risk writing something when you can’t confirm or justify it.

Similarly, if you have very old tests or blood tests, bring everything you have. No one knows which tests will be useful and which won’t. This also applies to prescriptions, medical summaries, or discharge sheets.

8. Mention previous vaccinations during the medical consultation

This point is more relevant for children, as there are many diseases that are dangerous for those under 5 years old and have a direct relationship with not having a specific vaccine. As we saw with COVID-19, suspicion of severe pneumonia during a pandemic could be inferred from whether a person received a particular vaccine or not.

9. List of medications, supplements, home remedies, or herbal treatments you take daily

The previous point is related to this, but here you list all the medications, supplements, home remedies, or treatments that have been given to you, even by a neighbor. We know that certain plants or medications can interfere with treatments, and then we struggle with why our patient is not responding the same as before to the same medication.

It’s not uncommon for the following scenario to occur: Doctor – “Mr. Ramiro, do you have any diseases?” Mr. Ramiro – “No, none, I’m as healthy as an oak tree.” Doctor – “Okay, great. And tell me, Mr. Ramiro, what medications do you take?” And then they list a long list of medications for hypertension and diabetes.

Some of the most famous supplements and herbs that interact with medications include:

1. St. John’s Wort, which comes in various forms like tea, tablets, or creams. According to the Mayo Clinic, the supplement may help with symptoms of mild to moderate menopause and depression. However, it diminishes the action of antidepressants, birth control pills, medications used after transplants, heart medications, HIV medications, cancer medications, or anticoagulants.
2. Glucosamine: Increases the effect of anticoagulants like warfarin.
3. Ginger: Can be harmful if you have chronic kidney disease.
4. Garlic: Interferes with HIV medications.
5. Ginseng: Can decrease the effectiveness of chemotherapy, blood pressure medications, heart medications, and depression medications

So, if you use any supplements or herbal remedies, it’s important to mention them. For example, nobody will typically say to the doctor, “Doc, I consume garlic,” since it often goes unnoticed due to how common and harmless it appears. But if you notice that you are not responding the same as before to the same medication, it would be worth bringing the list to your doctor and discussing it in more detail. In this link you can read more information about it.

10. Appropriate clothing for the physical examination during the doctor’s visit.

Always try to wear appropriate clothing, especially for the physical examination. Many people come in with knee pain and wear very tight jeans or clothes that definitely won’t allow us to examine efficiently.

During the physical examination, we look at the color of the skin, whether any area is warmer, the presence of scars, inflammation, abnormality compared to the other side of the body, and we may need to mobilize certain joints, among many other things. If there is clothing that obstructs us, we won’t be able to provide the best diagnosis.

I don’t think it’s your obligation as patients to know what the doctor will examine during the consultation, but it would help us a lot if you wear clothing that allows for the examination. Here are some general guidelines:

1. Knee examination: wear shorts.
2. Shoulder or arm pain: sleeveless shirts.
3. Blood pressure measurement: sleeveless shirts.
4. Abdominal pain examination: don’t wear a dress.
5. Throat pain examination: discard the chewing gum or candies you are eating. Sometimes, when you don’t discard them, you struggle to move them around with your tongue
6. Foot examination: wear sandals.

11. Personal hygiene (patients mention this themselves).

This often happens: patient – “I’m here because I have hemorrhoid problems; they bleed and hurt.” And then, during the examination, the patient comments that they are not prepared because they didn’t shower, and it won’t be possible to examine them. I mean, it’s not like it’s a life-or-death situation (in most cases), but it’s always better to be examined than not to be examined for the condition you came for.

It’s also not wrong for patients to decline examination; ultimately, it’s the patient’s decision. However, the patient should also take responsibility that if they are not examined, the doctor may refuse to provide a diagnosis and/or treatment, or the treatment provided may not work.

12. Data obtained through simple medical devices.

Always, always, always, we need, in addition to symptoms (which are the subjective part of our illness, what you perceive or feel), hard data (also called signs) are needed. How can we obtain them? As we saw in a previous post, it’s always a good idea to have these devices at home (we provide the links if you plan to buy any):

1. Temperature: again, obtained with a thermometer, preferably not a contactless one. Checking your temperature with your hand is of no use, as having a high fever suggests other types of illnesses.
2. Blood pressure: especially if you have hypertension, you should have a validated blood pressure monitor
3. Oxygen saturation: with COVID-19, we saw how necessary it is to have an oximeter at home. They come in versions for children and adults.
4. Blood glucose (or sugar) levels: measured with a glucometer. An internist once said, “Having diabetes is the same as having a glucometer at home,” emphasizing the need for it to adjust insulin doses or monitor the disease.

13. Relevant medical history for that specific condition

1. All medical histories are important, but not all are necessary for every condition. Why are some more important than others? While many diseases have a genetic component, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are hereditary. Other times, travel or lifestyle changes are important, especially with infectious diseases. Here’s a general list of relevant medical history that you can fill in with your information:
2. Travel abroad: especially in cases of diarrhea, fever, cough, or skin lesions.
3. Family history of: cancer, coagulation problems, gait problems, death before the age of 40, tuberculosis, or rare diseases.
4. Personal history: surgeries, blood transfusions, diseases, or allergies to medications.

Conclusion

As we have seen, there are many things going through the doctor’s and the patient’s minds during a medical consultation, so it’s easy to overlook important details that could guide us to a better diagnosis. That’s why, in this article, we tried to explain why we ask so many questions and how information processing occurs during the interview. This way, it makes more sense to consider data that we often overlook in our daily lives.