How can you help yourself avoid a missed diagnosis when you go to the emergency department? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Almost one in 18 people who visit an emergency department will not get a correct diagnosis, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality study led by David Newman-Toker at Johns Hopkins has found. Newman-Toker says there are things you can do to help yourself when you need to visit an ED.

Newman-Toker: There are three basic things that patients can do to help protect themselves. The first is to come prepared. The second is to ask good questions, and the third is to remain vigilant. The coming prepared really is about making sure your story is straight, before you get to the doctor. If you have time to journal or write down your symptoms and to summarize it in a pretty straightforward way, if you can digest it into what we might call an executive summary for the physician, that gives you an opportunity to spend more of your time working with the doctor thinking through the problem.  :33

Newman-Toker says this expedites helping the physician to help you. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.