For rheumatoid patients: your first prescription does not have to be the best for you. Sometimes it is the third prescription.

When we diagnose a patient with rheumatoid arthritis and we do an assessment for his disease activity and his general health condition, we prescribe then medications that, statistically, work for like 60 percent or more of the patients who have the same diagnosis and the same level of disease activity.

We give those medications a chance of around 8 weeks to kick in. Then we assess the patient. If the patient starts to show good improvement without disturbing side effects, we continue on the same treatment regimen, knowing that more improvement will still be happening as we follow up the patient.

If the patient does not show enough improvement and we know now this is quite a possibility still... 60 percent and 40 percent, here we might increase the dose of the medication or we might add another additional medication. We make another assessment after a few weeks again to decide it this is working or we need to do another edit in the treatment of the patient.

In the end, you will find that sometimes the first prescription worked so nicely for a given patient and, in another patient, it was actually the third prescription maybe.

If you are the kind of patient who when they immediately feel better on a given medicine they will say: Oh, this doctor is so good, or when they immediately feel the same on a given medicine they will say: Oh, the doctor is not as clever as I though, then you have a problem.

You need to know how medicine and the process of prescribing medications works. Because if you don’t know those facts, maybe you will be consulting a second and a third and a fourth rheumatologist and who knows maybe one of your doctors will insist that you restart one of the medications that did not work for you before also to make sure it really did not work.

It’s important that you watch this video to keep following up with your same doctor to go through a smooth transition from one treatment card to another, in case your medical condition required that, without any waste of time and money and health.