How To Be Your Best Advocate

Build a coordinated health care team

MS is a disease that can directly or indirectly affect almost any area of the body connected through the central nervous system. Your basic health care team will include your primary care physician, specialty doctors (including your neurologist), an MS-certified nurse, and a physical therapist, as well as your caregivers, partner, and/or loved ones.

You should expect members of your health care team to communicate with each other and share relevant information with each other to provide you with the best comprehensive care. This will reduce the chance of conflicting plans of care or over- or under-utilization of resources. During consultations, it’s important that your providers are open to multi-sided discussions where you are encouraged to express personal preferences and they present informed clinical options.

Neurologists and MS nurses who attend annual medical conferences focused on multiple sclerosis, such as CMSC or ECTRIMS, are more likely to be up to date on recent knowledge related to MS. Don’t hesitate to ask your providers how they remain informed as to the latest research and treatment guidelines. By working together you can establish a treatment path guided by clear goals.

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How To Be Your Own Best Advocate

Building A Strong Health Care Team

Building a strong health care team begins with YOU as you recruit team members with the skills and expertise to function in a coordinated way to provide you with the best care. As you work in active partnership with your team members — doctors, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, and office staff — it will become easier to identify quality care and to be empowered to communicate your needs, questions, concerns, and personal choices.

Primary care team

As a person living with multiple sclerosis (MS), it’s often easy to think of your neurologist as your primary, or most important, physician. However, you continue to need access to a primary care physician (PCP) who can take a big picture view of your health, while being available for urgent, acute, and chronic needs. For example, you would call your PCP if you suspected a urinary tract infection so that you could be quickly tested and prescribed treatment. Or if you have chronic conditions, such as hypothyroidism or high cholesterol, it is your PCP who monitors your health with routine laboratory testing and prescribes medication to treatment the condition.

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Building Your Best MS Health Care Team