It is hard to question your doctor or other health care provider. This becomes harder if your physician is sufficiently impatient, arrogant, and narrow-minded to believe that he or she should be making your decisions for you in some archaic paternalistic fashion. Despite Dr. Haig’s rant patients generally have a small number of diseases. Physicians, in contrast, must care for a much larger number of diseases in more patients. Therefore many patients will, in fact, know much more that the physician about their own disease.

Yet you must ask questions. If your questions are not answered in a timely, accurate, and satisfactory manner then you need a new doctor. A recent survery indicates that some of the most important questions are also the hardest to ask. If these questions make your doctor uncomfortable then it’s his/her problem. It really is OK to “bother” the doctor- after all that’s what he/she gets paid for.

It’s your health. Take charge.