A trip to the doctor is often stress inducing no matter what your health status may be or how often you go to the doctor. This could be, in part, because people often get bad health-related news from their family practice doctor if there is something going on. This fear can cause the patient to be less than forthcoming during their visit, in an attempt to not only please the physician, but tell him what they think he wants to hear in order to appear to be a star patient.
These commonly-told tale tales can range from telling a doctor you don’t smoke to avoid the “smoking is bad for you lecture” and despite smelling like cigarette smoke to fibs about medication adherence. However, what many people don’t realize is that lying to your family practice physician can be more than just a little bad; it can be downright dangerous.
Telling little lies about adhering to medication regimens or about your smoking habit may cause your Phoenix family practice doctor to forgo certain tests or look less closely at certain aspects of your health and focus on others as a result of what you tell them. This can be detrimental for you, particularly if you have a family history that ties in with your bad habits. Remember, doctors aren’t here to judge you; your Arizona family practice doctor is here to help and can only do so when armed with all of the proper information about your health.
A study done in conjunction with the Cleveland Clinic and the Ochsner Health System, as well as General Electric Co., found that patients age 25 to 34 were the most likely to lie to their Phoenix, AZ doctors over older patients. Men were also two times more likely to lie as women. There may be any number of reasons for this, including the fact that younger people often feel more immune to disease and developing conditions, as they are often not in the throes of those major health crises that can be befall you as you age. Additionally, this age set is still fixated on the desire to please their family practice physician, and may be in denial about the extent of their bad habits. A light smoking habit, for instance, may still be seen as something within control to a patient within this age range.
“by Kandice Linwright” at Google
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