VES - Working with Your Doctor to Optimize your Health and Well-Being

Join us for an informative and interactive session designed to help you work with your doctor to best manage your well-being.

Presented by Dr. Claire Adams, an Arthritis Society Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a registered psychologist. She is originally from Perth, Western Australia, and moved to Montreal in 2022 to work within the Scleroderma Patient-centered Intervention Network, an international collaboration of researchers, clinicians, and people living with scleroderma who work together to develop, test, and share support tools for people with scleroderma to better cope with their illness and manage their daily lives. Claire’s research focuses on ways researchers and people with scleroderma can work together to conduct high quality research that addresses patient needs.

Working with Your Doctor to Optimize your Health and Well-Being

How do you decide what to do to best manage your health and well-being? In scleroderma, no two people are exactly alike, and there is often not a single best decision for everybody. It can therefore be difficult to make decisions about healthcare that are most effective and appropriate for you. You need to make sure you can be an effective partner in your healthcare and communicate well with healthcare providers. This presentation will explain how you can build a successful partnership with your healthcare providers, including preparing for your healthcare appointments, communicating with healthcare providers, and making decisions, together with your healthcare providers, that are best for you. You will leave this session with some tips and tricks on how to be a knowledgeable and effective patient partner and resolve some common concerns about navigating the healthcare system.