The only one doctors always ask me about are falls:
Have you fallen in the last 2 weeks?
Does skiing count? Then no.
Are you afraid of falling?
Not when I stick to groomed blues.
In the last few (as in maybe 10?) years they’ve also been asking depression and suicide questions. I have in the past gotten seatbelt questions.
I’m with my mom at the doctor’s office now (waiting for him to show up, he’s running an hour late). So far she’s been asked about smoking, falls, and covid symptoms. That’s it. The doctor will just ask her stuff about her, the nurse who takes her blood pressure and temp and weight asks the routine screening questions.
Can you expand on why you think this is an issue? Certainly you should consider your safety before disclosing abuse.
Next time:
Doctor: “Do you have guns in your house?”
kayaker: “That’s none of your business”.
Doctor: “Do you feel safe in your home?”
kayaker: “Yes, because of all these damn guns in my house”
Yes I absolutely agree the health screening questions are there to hopefully provide an opportunity to educate and perhaps assist with an intervention. But seriously our family practice staff passed the buck on my daughter who was suffering from depression as a teen. The pamphlet and outdated list of counselors they handed her on her way out, did fuck all nothing to help her. No follow up call or appt just good luck and see ya next year. So if they’re gonna ask they should be well prepared to deal with the answers in a meaningful way.
When a doctor hands me a pamphlet on any topic, he or she always says something like, “Here’s some more information on ____ you might find interesting.” And they never give me pamphlets that don’t apply to my health situation. Maybe docs have found that handing every patient a pamphlet keeps them from having to listen to cantankerous patients bitching about how dare the doc (the professional who’s supposed to help them stay alive and healthy) ask about opioid use–as if opioid addiction is something that couldn’t happen to someone as upstanding as them. Why, the very idea! 
And unfortunately, trust has nothing to do with opioid addiction. Addiction isn’t something that happens only to people who abuse medication. A lot of people get addicted who only take opioids as directed. But even if addiction only happened to people who abuse opioids, it still isn’t a trust issue. No matter how well a doc knows the patient or how trustworthy the patient has been; addiction happens. Besides, you know how a doctor comes to know patients? By asking them questions.
To the best of my recollection, I have never been asked about whether I have guns in my house. I am routinely asked about whether I feel safe at home which, considering that I am in my late 60s, have bad knees and other health issues, and live alone, I have no problem with.
One of the times I was hospitalized after an emergency room visit before I was allowed to leave I was visited by a therapist who checked my mobility and how easy it was for me to dress myself. I was also questioned about my ability to do household chores, shop, and prepare my own meals. I have no idea what prompted this, as I was not there for anything which might suggest I was unable to care for myself. I remember being a bit annoyed at what I (at the time) considered a waste of my time.
“Do you feel safe at home?”
“Yes, since I installed all the booby traps.”
That’s kind of what I get, too, and what I meant by “healthcare by numbers” in my post earlier. At least for my doctor’s practice the tone is that they’re doing these things only to satisfy some checklist that the practice managers have set up.
To be fair and truthful, if we had more personal, individual care, I would love questions like this. Meaning that if my doctor wasn’t so overwhelmed with his/her caseload and insurance bullcrap that they could actually get to know me (and all his/her patients) at least enough to remember who I was at each visit, it would be a good thing to include.
All I can say without being insulting is that I cannot believe how irritable people are when other people are simply trying to do their job. Way to make someone’s life harder for no reason.
Yes I agree and that’s why I responded so, it was your post that triggered my recollections of disappointing encounters with our health providers.
And another beef is how they collected info, literally their back was turned toward the patient asking questions at us over their shoulder while typing answers into the computer. Felt like chopped liver over here.
I doubt if anyone in the UK is routinely asked about guns or feeling safe at home (unless, I suppose, there’s some reason to believe it’s relevant). There’s a difference between going to the GP for a specific reason and a regular routine check-up or medication review - I’d expect the latter to include some more general questions, though still according to circumstances (so, at my advancing age, how my balance is, whether I’ve any concerns about memory, for example).
I have noticed when going online for various things (as so much more has to, with the Covid situation) that there’s a regular series of questions about smoking, alcohol and gambling, and I assume the higher-risk answers would cause a pop-up list of advice and support resources to do something about it.
We too get complaints about doctors staring at their computer screens, but of course they’ve got to get up to speed on your history, and add to the record whatever they need to (the usual allowance here is ten minutes per appointment slot). You can see this happening sometimes in a TV series over here (“GPs Behind Closed Doors” - it’s amazing what people are willing to have shown on TV, but I suppose it’s dressed up as public health messages, even if it’s appealing to a certain voyeuristic fascination).
“Public Health”, brought to you by the people whose system has led me to order my prescription medications from outside the US so I can afford them. The people who have determined I qualify for a potentially lifesaving vaccine, then send me to a webpage that I have to check multiple times a day, repeatedly inputting the same damn information, only to be told, “tough luck, try again tomorrow”. The people who stand in the way of implementation of universal health care. Those people?
Many of those people share your concerns. Too much bureaucracy, too little assistance, lots of people with crazy expectations about doing their job, often very well under the circumstances.
At least we’re not socialist!
I think I was once asked about my memory…
Do you get mad at doctors if they ask how much you exercise, or if you eat enough fruit and vegetables? Do you get mad when they check your weight and blood pressure when you only went in for a gouty toe?
Doctors are expected to do basic preventive health screening. Asking if you have a gun, wear a seatbelt, or feel safe is an easy and nonintrusive way to keep your healthcare focused on simple, minor things instead of complex, life-changing things like gunshot wounds or elder abuse.
If you tolerate a finger in the bum for a prostate check, I fail to see how a gun ownership inquiry is more intrusive than that.
That’s the thing. So much time was spent updating the computer and asking about guns, that I had no exam. Nurse took my BP, and weighed me. Doctor just wrote a script for a uric acid blood test.
That’s what infuriates me. Docs (and nurses too) have to input SO much info on their PCs (or free-standing carts with laptops or iPads) that they’re not even making eye contact with the patient.
Combine that with the health care number-crunchers telling them they need to spend no more than 6 minutes 45 seconds with each patient (my assumption there), and there’s no time for anything like “Doc, I’ve got this problem, and I’m worried about these other issues, too”.
Ironically, my worst recent appointment was because I went in for a toe problem but the specialist was convinced I had GOUT and talked about it in capital letters… and had time for nothing else. (Labs came back with a sternly-worded “Patient shows not evidence of gout and bloodwork was unnecessary”)
I sometimes accompany my wife into the examination room during appointments and the doctor often asks her if she’s being abused at home. I keep my mouth shut but what’s the point of asking while I’m sitting there? My wife always looks at me before answering, which doesn’t seem suspicious at all.