If I had to guess, I’d bet that most people have lied to their doctor. Speaking for myself, sometimes it’s just easier. Now, I realize this is a stupid thing to do, but I guess I can take heart in recent news out of Dr. Barbara Korsch’s recent work out of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in knowing that I’m not alone.
In fact, Korsch, the author of The Intelligent Patient’s Guide to the Doctor-Patient Relationship, led Fox News to recently explore the greatest areas of whopperdom faced by physicians when trying to treat their patients.
1. Not taking prescribed medication correctly, completely, or … at all.
As embarrassing as it might be to admit it, “If you don’t tell us you’re skipping pills, we’ll assume you’re taking them and they aren’t working, so we might change the dosage or the prescription”—which may put off your recovery and cause side effects, says Laura Knobel, MD, a family physician in Walpole, Massachusetts, and a member of the board of directors for the American Academy of Family Physicians.
And when you toss antibiotics before you’re done with the full course, you may not kill off all the infectious bacteria in your body, leaving them resistant to drugs and possibly causing the illness to come back with greater force.
There’s a real science to pharmaceuticals, and the balance is often a dicey one. Doctors making sound medical decisions operate under …
