If you are considering any sort of investigation or treatment, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council recommends that you ask your practitioner the following sorts of questions:
• What is the possible or likely nature of my illness or disease?
• What is your proposed approach to investigation, diagnosis and treatment?
— what does this approach entail?
— what are its expected benefits?
— what are the common side-effects and risks of the intervention proposed?
— is the intervention a standard procedure or is it experimental?
— who will carry out the intervention? How much of that particular procedure has that person performed? And with what results, including rates of complications in her/his series of patients. (If he/she doesn’t know, this may indicate a reluctance to self-monitor and may be a bad sign.)
• What are the other options for investigation, diagnosis and treatment?
• How certain is the diagnosis?
• How certain is the treatment outcome?
• What is likely to happen if the proposed investigation or treatment does not occur, or if no procedure or treatment is undertaken?
• What significant long-term effects may be associated with particular investigations or treatments?
• How much time is involved in conducting particular investigations or treatments, and in recovering from them?
• What costs are involved, including costs payable after receiving Medicare and health-insurance rebates?
If you find it difficult to ask these sorts of questions, take someone along with you who can.
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