Educating your health care providers


(J) #1

Hi All,

I wanted to share a HCP POV here and maybe start a productive discussion about educating your HCP.

I am in the USA, as a start. I am a Certified Nurse-Midwife/Nurse Practitioner. I stopped delivering babies about 1.5 years ago, after 10 years (the 24 hour work cycle was killing me) and now work outpatient only where I see women with a wide variety of problems. I actually learned about Keto from a patient of mine with PCOS and this got me looking at a host of diet types with a critical eye and started me on my own Keto journey.

As an HCP I understand that I am human and fallible and don’t know everything. I think most HCPs feel this way. I love it when patients bring me new information that they’ve discovered on their own and I will always go and dig deeper into it. So it makes me sad to see posts here telling members to ‘find another doctor’ or ‘tell your doctor s/he’s an idiot.’ Most of us are open to new information brought to us by a patient. Yes, it is our responsibility to keep up-to-date, but there are just so many hours in a day.

I also think that people here have the notion that all HCPs are in the pocket of “big-pharma,” but in my years of practice, I have never worked anywhere that allowed more than a lunch education session to be provided by a pharmaceutical rep. Maybe this is a Northeast thing, but wanted to put that out there.

Have you successfully educated your HCP about Keto or another modality? How did you do it? Was it hard or were they open to what you brought them?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.


(Deb) #2

Kudos to you for being open to new ideas! I think it is on an upward sqing, but as far as government funded healthcare clinics, where our indigent population is treated, those very people who most need our help, they are at the mwrcy of those institutions who sign the checks.
I use one of these clinics as my PCP for it’s location and my dr is pretty goid ( and married to the top surgeon in the area!), and I donated Dr Fungs book, taljed to him about their useless diabetes nutrition program, all ri no avail. Will it ever go mainstream? Maybe. We just have to keep trying.