What does my physician expect of me?

Physician and patient must work together to ensure the best possible outcome. Our surgeons offer these 10 guidelines for his patients:

1. We expect that you will research and investigate your condition, using resources such as friends, the Internet, the library, and others.
2. We expect that you will follow up on instructions asking you to obtain medical, dental, and other specialty medical consultations before surgery, and that you will take the time to understand the discharge instructions after you leave the hospital.
3. We expect that you will educate and familiarize yourself with the planned procedure, its attendant risks and benefits, and the full complement of potential outcomes, and that you will make your decision accordingly.
4. We expect you to visit our Web site and carefully review the information contained at that location, and to ask me to clarify or elaborate on anything that is not entirely clear to you.
5. We expect you to take care of your health, by practicing sound personal hygiene, avoiding smoking and excess alcohol use, and maintaining a reasonable body weight and activity level after surgery.
6. We expect you to investigate your surgeon and his team, and to establish a relationship with us only if you are entirely convinced that we are compatible and that our relationship will benefit your health.
7. We expect you to respect the constraints that we must work with in health care in terms of scheduling surgery, planning discharges, and accommodating changes, and unexpected deviations in planning.
8. We expect you to treat our team with professional courtesy and respect, and to expect compassion, attention, care, and professionalism from us in turn.
9. We expect you to understand that the decision to proceed with total joint replacement surgery is a major and irreversible undertaking, and that there is nothing casual about this surgery no matter what the media may have led you to believe, and that life with an artificial joint in place is not the same as life with your own joint in your body.
10. We expect that you understand the value of a relationship based on mutual respect, regard, trust, integrity, and the value of such a relationship in optimizing the service that we can provide you, and to realize and accept that we are here to do our best for you.