Do You Recommend Journaling To Your Patients?

Do you recommend journaling to your patients? If not, why not? I have not talked with my patients about journaling, I have, on the other hand, stressed the importance have putting a folder together that would include medication’s they take, and updating the list the first day of the month, also to include any surgeries, procedures along with a list of any thing they may have been diagnosed with. I work in the ER, and I can’t tell you how many people I see who have no idea the names of the medications they are on and why they are taking them. Some times a family member will come with the patient to the ER, the patient is unable to speak, and when I ask them some simple questions like, “ what surgeries have they had in the past?”, they have …show more content…
I would not take a pill for such an endeavor, I would be more inclined to schedule a time to do it rather than pop a pill.. I will not even take an aspirin for a headache, I use hand reflexology I learned a technique a few years ago while studying for my LVN and found it affective. I’ve even used it on co-workers, and they a re dumbfounded that it works, it plants a seed that you don’t always have to take a pill, and that our bodies are an amazing thing that if we listen to it, we can give it what it needs. Now, I do encourage my patients with new onset of hypertension to write down there blood pressure daily, this way they will have a record of how there blood pressure is trending and have something to physically hand there physician when they go in for a check up, I tell my patients that if they have hypertension (high blood pressure) don’t let it have them, that It is their body and they have they ability to control it …show more content…
A few weeks ago I had a patient that had come in for hyperglycemia, I looked at his chart and noticed he had been in our ER 5 times in the last 5 days. I also noticed that he would complain of head pain, and requested and received narcotics. Upon entering his room and introducing himself, he began stating he had a “headache”. I asked for his hand, he said what for, I then explained that there was a technique that I used on my patients that was as effective as drugs with no side affects. He gave me his hand and said that Dilaudid would be more effective for his pain, I then said can I get you a Tylenol, he followed up with, “I’m allergic!”. I am total agreement that CAM modalities can be effective and should be used, but allot of my patients come to see me for the