Choosing the Right Doctor

When I was a kid there were just a few doctors, your family doctor and the pediatrician who delivered babies. Our parents took us to the family doctor for colds to having our tonsils removed. Maybe because I was young I never really knew how many doctors that specialized in different fields were around. But I would have to believe that in the past 50 years the good old family doctor that used to come to your house no longer exists. He is now your PPO or HMO provider and he really doesn’t even know you.

With the health care crisis, high insurance costs and people not even able to afford insurance it is tough. We need to be able to get to the right doctor without spending so much money wasting our time with the wrong doctor. Today there are so many specialists for so many illnesses that deal with every part of your body. The key is to find out which one you need. Medicine has come along way in the past 50 years and for all of our benefits. But we still are not educated enough to know who we have to see for what. Usually our Primary Care Physician dictates it all. Anyway if your going through peri or menopause you know for sure you don’t need to see a Pediatrician.

So let’s get down to some of the key doctors who you should have on you list just like your grocery-shopping list. It is good to know who does what and how they can help you. I am not going to get into the super specialists but just a list of the doctors you should have for your basic health needs.

A good Primary Care Doctor

– basic needs such as colds, earaches, minor health issues.

A Gynecologist

– for yearly pap smears and regular female problems. They too can set up appointments for you to have you breast exams and also scans for your bones to see if you have lost any bone mass over the years.

A good Endocrinologist

– they specialize in our body chemistry and probably the is the best one to see if there is hormonal imbalances and if you are going through menopause. They usually are up to date on all the new medicines or treatments available to you versus your Primary Care Doctor. In addition if you are heading towards or going through menopause they are also good in assisting with problems with sexual dysfunction. That seems to be a major problem for women because our estrogen levels are starting to drop and we start to have dryness in our vagina, lack of sex drive and other problems that causes us distress.

A Internist

– specializes in the inner workings of our bodies, like the stomach, pancreas, kidneys, liver and so forth.

A Dermatologist

– to check out those brown spots that have grown on our bodies from years of abuse in the sun. No one knew that as good as the sun is it can cause us problems in later life from too much sun exposure growing up. Skin cancer is rapidly rising from overexposure to the sun and none of us knew it. We just wanted to look TAN.

A Psychologist or Psychiatrist

– if need be to talk things over when you feel that no one is taking you seriously and that includes family members. Our friends really love us but everyone has their own problems. Sometime an unbiased third party can help us much more and it is just between you and your doctor.

My personal opinion is that if your insurance covers it, you are better off seeing a doctor in a teaching hospital. The reason being is that they are so much more up to date on new and different techniques in medicine because of all the funding and research that is being done in those hospitals. They have a leg up on the doctor down the block. Whomever you see make sure you like them and feel comfortable with them. That is paramount for your physical and mental wellness.