Patient-Doctor Relationship, Naturopathic Doctor, Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, AZ

A good patient/doctor relationship is essential when you are trying to identify root causes of your health issues. Dr. Tina Marcantel is a naturopathic doctor in Gold Canyon, AZ, who also serves the East Valley cities of Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Queen Creek, Scottsdale, Apache Junction, and the greater Phoenix area.

Transcript:

My patients teach me a lot of things. The more that you can tell me about what’s going on with your body–your symptomology–the more I can help you. So this is truly a patient/doctor relationship where I need your input. I depend upon that input because you live in your body and I don’t.

Every person is an individual and everybody has some things that are different from the others so we treat each person as that–as an individual. And we base our treatment protocol on the symptomology of the patient, their history, and we also do a physical exam, as well. The testing is just as important. We combine all those; we call them pieces of the puzzle. And we try to figure out what is going on with that person. So I always tell people this relationship will be different; you will be participating because you will be telling me what’s going on with your body so I can put together the pieces of the puzzle.

We write goals together, also. On the first or second visit after we’ve done the intake and we get lab results we’ll write goals together. “This is what we want to see: Increased energy, want to sleep better, we want our progesterone levels to be higher.” So we have some concrete goal-setting that we do, and we do it as a team, always, because, for instance with hormones or neurotransmitters, things change according to, for instance, the stress level of the patient.

I have an e-mail that’s open to my patients. If their symptoms start to change they can contact me and we can tweak things accordingly. So nothing is in stone, I always say. Because if your lifestyle changes, sometimes your chemistry changes with that and we may have to adjust it.