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- Self-Advocacy in Clinic
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- Making Your Voice Heard
Making Your Voice Heard
Negotiating and Assertiveness
Your healthcare and quality of life are most important to you, so you get to make the final decision. But doctors get to decide what they are comfortable with. Your goal is to find ways to collaborate with your doctors or find new doctors.
Your Approach Matters
Your healthcare needs to be tailored to you, your needs, and your preferences. Sharing your preferences and ‘why’ helps your doctor understand you and the situation. Asking to discuss your options while sharing your why helps you and your doctor to negotiate the plan moving forward.
What to Say
Working with your doctor is important but it may be difficult to know what to say. Your doctor is trying to provide options on how to solve the problem presented in your appointment. Here are some phrases that may help you talk to your doctor.
- What else could it be?
- Would you be willing to run this test to rule ________ in or out?
- Would you be willing to do a trial for this medication?
- Would you be willing to talk to my other doctors to figure this out?
If Negotiating Doesn’t Work
- Find an ally within your medical team or the clinic to help you
- Move up the hierarchy until you find someone who can help you
- Find another doctor
Advocating and Conflicts
It can be frustrating when you are not getting the care you need to address your issues. Conflicts can arise if you lack clarity on your desired outcomes, priorities, or goals, you try to connect with a provider unable or unwilling to help, or when your communication lacks important information needed for them to help you. Advocating is an important way to help deal with this conflict.
You can think of advocating as the following three steps:
- Clarify your goal or desired outcome
- Connect with a person who can help you
- Communicate the information they need to understand and help you with your goal
Advocate with Your Provider
Clarifying and sharing your goals, priorities, and preferences are the most important part of advocating with your provider. Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions if you are uncertain or don’t understand something. Ideally, you should be able to work things out directly with your doctor but if not, you can escalate your advocacy to management or the administration.
Advocate with Management
Clarifying and sharing your goal with your provider is important but what do you do if that is not enough? It may be time to reassess whether or not the person you are working with is the right one. If you have a conflict or disagreement with your doctor, you can look for someone else like other doctors and/or others that may be able to help you. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other people who can help you such as:
- Patient advocates are hired by many organizations to help resolve or avoid conflicts with patients.
- Office or Department Managers are especially helpful if there is a conflict about office or department policies or processes.
- You can ask your existing medical team to advocate for you to help address the conflict.
Advocate with Administration
If advocating with Management has not helped to resolve your conflict, you can reach out to someone in a hospital or organization’s administration office to ask for their assistance, especially if it is a serious or life-threatening situation.
- The administration office usually has someone working 24/7 who can often help resolve conflicts between patients and staff. Patient advocates may also be referred to as patient representatives and are often considered part of the administration team.
- The Risk Management Office is focused on reducing the risk to the hospital or organization. Requesting their help, especially in situations where your health is at risk, can help address the conflict.
Powerful Ways to Ask for Help when Advocating
Can you help me with _________?
How can we work together towards _________?
