Using Physicians as Risk Management Consultants
A Wise Man Should Make Use of His Doctor to Manage His Health Risk!
Apr 9, 2009
These days, many men have experienced the need to seek the advice and expertise of a Risk Management Consultant in the course of their business.
It certainly is an impressive sounding title - but what exactly does such a Risk Management Consultant actually do?
The work of such a professional usually involves undertaking a detailed assessment of the business or company that employed him, and then advising the business how it could minimize the risk of accidents in its workplace. The consultant also has to advise businesses that have suffered an industrial accident how they could rebuild or modify their workplace to prevent such accidents happening again.
If one reflects on the task of these Risk Management Consultants, one cannot help thinking how similar their job is to that of a good family physician. After all, isn’t what GPs try to do with patients who consult them best described as Risk Management Consultancy?
Consulting the Family Doctor
On many occasions, men go to consult their doctors after they have had their “accident” – whether it is a heart attack or the discovery of a very high blood sugar level or a large bowel tumour – and in these instances the doctor's job is to either get them into a coronary care unit of a hospital as fast as possible or confirm the diagnosis of diabetes and institute lifelong management or find a good specialist to deal with the colon cancer. With diseases such as these, family physicians refer their patients on to the experts – but once the interventional cardiologist/cardiac surgeon or endocrinologist/diabetes specialist or gastroenterologist/colorectal surgeon has done his or her part, the family doctor has to pick up the pieces and continue caring for the patient. The GP's role here is to ensure that the patients rehabilitate themselves and institute measures to prevent the “accident” happening again.
In other situations (and this is becoming increasingly common as patients and the government appreciate the value of preventive health ) Family Physicians can play a very effective role as Risk Management Consultants to their patients - and this is where a wise man can make good use of his family physician. By identifying those patients who have a strong family history of heart disease and have allowed their blood pressure and cholesterols to gradually creep up, spotting those patients who are overweight, over-waisted and under-exercised and recognizing those who are at risk of colonic cancer, a good GP is in effect performing a Health Risk Assessment of his patients.
Risk Management
The analogy can be taken further. When a doctor explains the benefits of reducing blood pressure and cholesterol to the patient at risk of heart disease (and occasionally even motivates him to take medication), encourages the “pre-diabetic” patient to start losing weight and taking exercise to prevent him progressing to overt Diabetes, and persuades the patient whose father developed a colon cancer at the age of 55 years to undertake a test for bowel tumours - isn’t this what is meant by Risk Management?
Sadly, managing and reducing risk – and preventing fatal diseases – does not appear as glamorous to the public as seeing hospital doctors (like in the TV shows) rushing around authoritatively sticking needles and tubes into people or performing heroic surgery to transplant a heart or remove a huge kidney cancer.
But a man who is interested in staying healthy and minimising the chances of developing life threatening diseases should make it a point to make use of his family doctor.
A good family doctor (like the consultant who helps businesses prevent expensive accidents) can do a lot for society by preventing patients getting heart attacks, suffering the ravages of uncontrolled diabetes and dying from metastatic cancers.
Perhaps if the doctors also gave themselves an impressive sounding title and called themselves Risk Management Consultants, more men would be more inclined to consult them to reduce their risk of disease.
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