Lying To Your Doctor? Why Patients Might Be Doing It

As per a study published in the JAMA Network Open, around 60 to 80 percent of patients have lied to their doctors at some point

For an accurate diagnosis, transparency between a patient and the healthcare provider is a prerequisite. However, both patients and doctors are often challenged by complicated communication. Both sides engage in withholding information from each other. The reasons they might do so might not be the same. While doctors might do it under circumstances where something might be hard to explain, patients might do it in fear of judgment.

As per a study published in the JAMA Network Open, around 60 to 80 percent of patients have lied to their doctors at some point. The lead author of the study informed that she wanted to understand how and why people misled their physicians for varied reasons.

Withholding can lead to dangerous outcomes

The study surveyed people in groups of two and they were questioned whether they avoided telling the truth to a healthcare provider because they weren't able to follow their instructions, or did they disagreed with their recommendations or were they not doing the things they had been asked to do like exercising regularly, or eat a proper diet, or taking a particular medication at a certain time. As per the researchers, keeping away this information could potentially lead to negative health outcomes such as inappropriate dosage or misleading diagnosis.

Reporter's Diary

On a day in October as I headed to visit my clinician for a routine checkup, I was seated across two men right outside the OPD chamber. One man towards the right had a nervous expression on his face. He had not been taking his insulin drug for three months now and his sugar levels were all time high. The man sitting next to him was a close aide. Seeing the man acting nervously, the aide interrogated. The man admitted of skipping the drug for months as it interfered with his appetite for . The aide chuckled on hearing the worry and asked him to bluff the doctor by saying that the drug made him uncomfortable and nauseous. The man took the aide's advice by the book and lied to the doctor about the same. On hearing the account, the clinician suspected false narrative and politely asked him that he would made him switch to insulin injection if he kept on taking his treatment in light.

Power dynamics in play

As per some experts, many patients don't open about their condition primarily because they don't want to be judged or lectured about their behaviour. They might also feel a sense of embarrassment about their health choices. According to some health experts, most patients want their healthcare providers to think highly of themselves. Sometimes they might also worry about being pigeonholed as someone who make bad life changes. As per some studies, it is unrealistic to expect all patients to risk humiliation and social embarrassment without healthcare providers first setting a tone of tolerance, workability and acceptability.