Doctors and Medical Professionals

It involved using a camera to look for abnormal growths inside my bowel.

But, lying on the operating table waiting to be put to sleep, I suddenly realised the surgeon about to do the test hadn't introduced themselves.

Maybe they would speak to me afterwards, I thought.

But I was mistaken — not even a quick "hello".

The relationship between patient and doctor is as old as medicine itself.

Despite advances in drugs, surgery and scans, the process of getting better always starts with a conversation.

When Iona first got the blemish, she was irritated, but not too concerned.

She assumed the pimple was the result of a few late nights or some junk food — nothing out of the ordinary.

"But [after a while] I realised that I consistently had this one really bad pimple, and then consistently had a couple of really bad pimples," Iona said.

The acne came as a surprise for Iona, who didn't have a history of acne.

"I never had any problems with acne growing up," she said.

The right GP can make a big difference to how healthy you are and may ultimately save your life.

As well as diagnosing illness, a good GP can draw your attention to problems you never knew mattered, decide if you need certain tests, refer you to the right specialists, monitor your progress, offer reassurance or advice, and keep you out of hospital or limit the care you need there.

If you have a chronic or serious illness, your GP relationship will be especially important.

So what should inform your choice?

The Medical Journal of Australia recently reported that of the 4.1 million unvaccinated Australians, 92 per cent (3.8 million) were adults.

CT scans are used by doctors to get to the core of a problem by creating a 3D image of the most inaccessible nooks of the body.

But the beams of ionising radiation can cause cellular damage.

A fresh analysis of 2013 research is being presented by researchers from the University of Melbourne at the World Congress of Public Health in Melbourne.

They said the radiation risk was much greater than previously acknowledged.

The results indicated that most of the excess cancers occurring more than two years after a CT scan were caused by radiation from the scan.