Working with your health care team

Global Genes (globalgenes.org) has a really outstanding webinar (video) at its site with suggestions for working with your health care team about your (or your child's) rare disease.

Three particularly interesting points were:

1) it's useful to write out a brief narrative of what the disorder is and what your experience with it is, and bring it with you to medical appointments to make it easy to tell new health care providers the basic information without forgetting anything important;

2) for children who are hospitalized, there are often "child life" professionals who can help with things that aren't exactly medical treatment, but that make the experience better, so be sure to ask for those services; and

3) for both adults and children who are undergoing a wide range of treatment and have had a case manager assigned at the insurance agency, consider that person part of your medical care team and keep him/her in the loop.

You can watch the whole thing here: https://globalgenes.org/rare-webinar-communicate-with-healthcare/