Do’s and don’ts for epilepsy patient visits

  Note for epilepsy patients: 1. Bring all the information from previous visits, including detailed EEG diagrams, head MRI or CT films, and all labs. It is best to arrange them in chronological order. This is true even for follow-up visits, because the doctor sees many patients every day and has many other things to do, so it is impossible to remember the exact condition of the child he or she has seen. Please understand. It is a good idea to be able to organize your child’s seizures and medications in writing according to time so that you do not forget the condition you want to introduce and the questions you want to ask in the consultation room.  2. If possible, you should record your child’s seizures with a cell phone, camera or video camera, as this is very helpful for diagnosis.  3. Describe the child’s seizure as carefully as possible to the doctor: Therefore, once the child has a seizure, be calm and observe the seizure as much as possible, including whether the child’s eyes are staring and in which direction, whether the head is twisted and in which direction, whether the face is blue or white, whether the mouth is purple around the mouth, whether there is increased foaming or saliva, whether the limbs are stiff and twitching, whether there is symmetry, and whether there is incontinence. Is it very fatigue and sleepy after the seizure, is the limb weak (symmetrical or asymmetrical), is there vomiting, is there slurred speech just after the seizure, etc.?  4, EEG is best done in a better medical unit, because it requires experience to see the chart. Also, print as many original diagrams as possible, especially the background ones when awake, the ones during seizures and the ones that the local doctor thinks are abnormal, so that other doctors can look at the diagrams themselves. The EEG should be a diagram that includes waking as well as natural sleep.  5. Generally, children with epilepsy routinely require blood, urine routine, liver and kidney function, electrolytes, and fasting blood glucose tests, so please have these tests done locally when visiting a foreign patient so that the time spent in Beijing can be reduced.  6. At the initial consultation, it is generally necessary to bring the child for face-to-face consultation. If the child does not have any other discomfort during the follow-up consultation, he or she may not be brought.  Epilepsy and other neurological diseases are difficult to treat, so the process requires the doctor’s full attention, careful history taking and physical examination, so the initial consultation usually takes about 20 minutes or more. Therefore, it is very important for the patient’s family to cooperate and understand the process of seeing the doctor. Many parents say “the doctor will only take you 2 minutes to help me look”, but this is impossible, because even if you look at the laboratory results, you often need to analyze the judgment and ask the medical history to make the final judgment, and it is never possible to see the patient in 2 minutes, otherwise it will only be a simple treatment. This is also for the patient’s responsibility, I hope parents can give understanding and support. Please be patient while waiting. If people enter the clinic frequently, they will only interfere with the doctor and make the process slower. Doctors should understand parents, but please also understand doctors: because the serious process of seeing a doctor is very exhausting, there is a limit to the number of patients a doctor can see each day, and it is impossible to add unlimited numbers. Otherwise, the doctor will end up in a very poor state and it will be impossible to see the patient well. This is also for the sake of the patients, so we ask parents to understand.  8. If you have created a medical record during your previous visit to our hospital, please make sure to use your pink card to take out your medical record from the registration office for your next visit.