Educating Patients on Bone Health |
Talking with patients about what osteoporosis is, how to prevent it and how to deal with it is one of the challenges that physicians have, according to Dr. Deepa Sharma, Family Medicine Physician with Baptist Health Primary Care.
The doctor says sometimes patients get in shock, but they finally understand that condition and why they should prevent falls.
Transcript
So doctor when a patient comes to your office, how do you educate your patients on a bone health? I mean do you find yourself initiating the osteoporosis conversation. >I do I do initiate the conversation. >And do they have that look? >Yep after age 65 I speak with everyone about it but generally after age 50 I start touching upon it I do start the conversation by talking about if there have been any recent falls to discuss falls and fall precautions and then backpedaling towards osteoporosis but yeah I get that look a lot like I didn’t know that this is something that is going to affect me and it is something that we do have to discuss >And when you start explaining just the severity behind some of the you know the data of what could happen do they try to kind of go—? >Yeah, and actually you know when I do what’s called the annual preventive exam and it’s a visit that is focused on screening and that’s something I discuss with patients it’s screening based on age and conditions and so for certainly over 65 and for certain patients under 65 when I bring it up they’re usually shocked and many times people say no one has discussed this with them before and then I do raise some awareness about no one expects that they’re gonna have a fall you know my patients who have fallen didn’t say hey I knew it was gonna happen and so it’s the fact that it’s something that can be preventable and so raising some awareness about falls fall precautions bone health it’s very very important.