Patients need to engage with their own health
In a previous post I gave some clinical advice aimed at primary prevention e.g. self checking yourself for cardiac risk factors. Of course while prevention is better than cure - I didn’t mention secondary prevention or treat to target.
It’s still surprising to me how many patients have little engagement with their own health. They dont know the name of their tablets what they are for or what dose they are on (despite me telling them)
We aim for concordance not just compliance. (look it up!) Many better people than me have written about this but again from an advice point of view - if you have a chronic disease - do you know what you should be being treated to?
If you have hypertension - what bp are you aiming for? Do you test regularly - do you come in if its not being achieved? Gout - do you know your last uric acid? Cholesterol do you know your 5 panel results and what is your target non-HDL-C and are you at it? If you are diabetic - what was your last HBA1C - have you profiled your glucose intake with a CGM machine? are you engaged?