When Carol Daniel, a veteran broadcast journalist who lives near St. Louis, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2022, her husband encouraged her to seek a second opinion. She was worried that consulting another doctor might seem like a betrayal.<\/p>\n
Daniel said she wondered: \u201cAm I cheating on him? Am I going behind his back? Am I acting like I don\u2019t trust him by seeking a second opinion?\u201d<\/p>\n
Many patients find themselves in this position, but family medicine physician Jen Caudle said patients shouldn\u2019t feel awkward about asking for a second opinion. In fact, in her practice in New Jersey, she encourages people to have open conversations with their care team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be offended,\u201d Caudle said. \u201cWe should support you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patients can also think of their primary care provider as the quarterback of their care team, Caudle said, and ask that doctor for help navigating opinions or diagnoses from specialists.<\/p>\n
Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, hosts of the HealthQ series, spoke with Caudle about the sometimes-awkward art of asking for a second opinion.<\/p>\n
The QTip:<\/strong><\/p>\n Your primary care provider can help you navigate first and<\/em> second opinions from specialists.<\/p>\n Katherine Ruppelt and<\/em> Emily Siner at Nashville Public Radio contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable healthcare system. It\u2019s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and KFF Health News.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Carol Daniel, a veteran broadcast journalist who lives near St. Louis, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2022, her husband encouraged her to seek a second opinion. She was worried that consulting another doctor might seem like a betrayal. Daniel said she wondered: \u201cAm I cheating on him? Am I going behind his back?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}