How to Communicate Effectively With Your Healthcare Provider About Vulvar Pain

How to Communicate Effectively With Your Healthcare Provider About Vulvar Pain

In order to ensure that you receive an optimum outcome to ameliorate your vulva pain, it is essential to provide your Vulva Pain Specialist with concise, accurate information.  – So this means having good written & oral communication skills, and being in touch with your Vulva Pain Doctor on a regular basis. By your being able to go into detail, and accurately describe any changes that have come about from the treatment protocol that you have been given, your Vulva Specialist will be able to get you back on track to good health and well-being quicker. So let’s take a deep dive into what you can do to prepare for an appointment:

• Several days prior to your first appointment: send, or arrange for your healthcare practitioner to send your full medical records, and any relevant lab and scan results, to your new Vulva Doctor
• Ask your new Vulva Consultant’s office to send you any registration/medical forms that you have to complete. That way, you will not have the stress of having to fill them in on-site
• Compile a ‘Pain Diary,’ (with daily and hourly sections), as soon as possible prior to your appointment. Be sure to include what you were doing before, and at the time, the vulva pain came on. Further, note how long the pain lasted, and what you were doing when it stopped
• If you have any questions or concerns, note them down so that you can discuss them with your Pain Doctor. (It is very easy to forget important points if you do not do this!)

During your appointment, be sure to:

• Speak clearly and concisely. Go through all your written questions
• Give precise details. (Although this can be difficult, practise makes perfect!)
• If you don’t understand something that the Pain Consultant is talking about, do not be shy, ask them to kindly explain it again. – It is extremely important that you comprehend everything extremely well
• If necessary, take short written notes
• Let your Pain Doctor know if you would like to have more detailed information on any of the conventional or cutting-edge treatments or therapies that they recommend for your Holistic Personalised Treatment Plan [1]. They will be more than happy to refer you to a medical website, etc.

Reference

[1]. National Vulvodynia Association (2023). “How to Communicate Effectively with Your Health Care Provider.”