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Patients

The Patient is Always Right – But Right About What?

May 5, 2020 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: < 1 minute

The patient is always rightIn business it’s been suggested that the customer is always right. And in medicine the patient is always right.

  • Right about their perspective.
  • Right about their agenda.
  • Right about their hidden agenda
  • Right about their symptoms.
  • Right about their story.
  • Right about what they’re most concerned with.
  • Right about what they understand.
  • Right about what they’ve seen and experienced.
  • Right about what they live with when they get out of bed in the morning.
  • Right about what they believe is causing their problem.

So we need to understand that the patient is always right before we can ever begin to diagnose, treat or even connect.

Then our job is to tease out what they’re right about.


Modified image via the National Library of Medicine.

If you like this post you might check out the 33 charts Doctoring 101 Archives. It’s the stuff written here that’s related to caring for patients. It’s the closest thing to offering advice for the art of direct patient care. In fact, every 33c post has tags that will bring you to related, archived material that you might like. Check ‘em out. 

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Tagged With: Doctoring 101

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  • Doctors, Patients and Boundaries
  • The 2000 Word Patient Email
  • Will Open Notes Revolutionize Patient Care?

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Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Medical Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital Austin and one of health care’s influential
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