I was recently contacted by www.patient.co.uk and asked if I would be interested in reviewing their 'MyHealth Questionnaire' ....as I have been struggling with ill health quite a bit lately, I was very much up for this and intrigued to see how helpful this tool would be for me.
When visiting the www.patient.co.uk homepage, you will find the MyHealth Questionnaire at the top right hand side of the page.
The questionnaire was very straight forward and was split into 7 sections each with a series of questions to answer.
They were:
- About You:This section confirms the basics such as gender, marital status, number of children you have, etc.
- Medical History:Pretty self explanatory - this section covers any health problems or conditions you have or have suffered with in the past.
- Family History:This section asks for details of the medical backgrounds of your immediate family.
- Lifestyle:This section confirms things as such as wether or not you smoke or have ever smoked, how much you drink, etc.
- Biometrics:This covers the facts such as your weight, height, measurements, blood pressure etc. There is a "Don't Know" option for most of the medical aspects such as blood pressure etc.
- Diet:This section asks how much fruit/veg you eat, how much sugary food you eat etc - all "technical" foodie terms are explained in basic terms if you hover over the question mark icon, which I found useful on some of them!
- Stress:The final section is all about the stress you experience - asking if you have experienced anxiety or feelings of depression and so on.
Once the questionnaire has been completed, your Patient Q Score is calculated. This is where you are placed in a virtual queue of 100 people.
If you score 1-20 you're placed in the risk zone. 21-60 is the transformation zone. 61-90 is thethe healthy zone and 91-100 is the the optimum zone.
The closer you are to 100, the healthier you are.
Once you have your score, you are given some tips and advice on what areas could use improvement and some suggestions on how to go about this.
You can then set yourself some personal goals , stating what you would like to achieve and how you intend to do that. You can also opt to receive email prompts relating to your goals.
All in all, I found the survey to be very simple to use and feel that it would certainly be beneficial if you are just looking for a very general round-up of your basic health and ways to improve it.
I was quite surprised though at how basic the medical history section was....the survey didn't allow me to mention that I had given birth 8 months ago (I believe it asked if I had given birth more recently than that....however I feel that anything as recent as a year would be relevant), and also didn't give me an opportunity to put across that I suffer with an auto-immune disease for which I am on regular medication (my condition was not one of those listed).
I think a section asking the patient to give details of any specific health concerns they have at present would also be beneficial....I personally would have welcomed the chance to run through a check list of symptoms or areas of concern, in order to get some feedback on health concerns I currently have.
However the recommendations I did receive were helpful, and the results I had seemed accurate for me - nothing I didn't already know but it can be helpful to see it in black & white....certainly spurred me on to make a conscious effort to improve my diet in 2014!
In summary, I found the survey to be very user friendly and I would certainly use it should I wish to set some goals to improve my general well being, but it's not something I feel useful for anything more specific than that.
To try the survey out for yourself, visit http://www.patient.co.uk/