I think our own healthcare is a balance between ourselves and our HCP's.
I would never completely ignore any advice I was given though by a doctor, they have, after all, trained for many years and studied medicine at a level that most of us would not reach.
I know that mistakes are sometimes made, and, yes, there are good doctors as well as bad, which is the case in all aspects of life really.
To be honest, I actually feel sorry for our GP's nowadays. They are, more or less, told what to do, how to think, how to treat, by our wonderful government, on top of that, they are now put under enormous pressure to meet this target, that target and the other target!!
You cannot measure healthcare properly using targets. GP's should be able to treat their patients in the way that they believe will bring the best outcome for their patient without having to constantly think about the cost and targets.
It's easy for us, on an individual level, to say that we're not getting enough advice, care and the rest of it, but let's look at the whole picture, that doctor has got thousands of patients all with different conditions and so they have to spend most of their time trying to balance everything out, making sure that they don't go above their budgets and pressurised to meet endless targets.
I'm in my 50's now so I remember well what "family doctors" were like, and, yes, I would go back to those days tomorrow, but times move on, the population is ever growing, people are living much longer now, there are many, many medical conditions and many, many patients with them.
I'm not saying that we should all bow down and agree with everything that we're told by our HCP's, but I would personally never ignore what I was being advised, I might say that I'll think about it, as I often have in the past, but really, what's the use of seeing a HCP if we're just going to ignore what we're being advised?
Having said all that about our HCP's, we all do have to take some responsibility regarding our own health, it needs to be a 2 way thing. We are so lucky now that we have the internet, we can research and educate ourselves to a certain degree. Indeed websites like Diabetes UK are worth their weight in gold, as are many other health related websites, I've only just joined you here, but I've already learned so much that I never knew about all aspects of diabetes, we can both give and receive advice, support and understanding at a level that our HCP's just haven't got the time to do nowadays, and in all honesty, I like that we can do that, there's nothing better really than speaking to people who have the same condition, I find it very beneficial to me.
So to round up, it is a two way street, receiving medical advice about diabetes from our HCP's, and doing our own research, I think the two work nicely together.
