Don’t go alone. Of all the patient behaviors we asked about, taking a friend, spouse, or other family member along to the appointment most strongly correlated with overall satisfaction with one’s doctor. A second party can review with you ahead of time what you want to get out of the visit, remind you to bring up things you might have forgotten, and add information and create a more interactive dialogue with the physician. Having the person take notes during the visit frees you to concentrate on what the doctor is saying at the moment.

“It may be that having a second person in the room causes the doctor to take the patient more seriously or try a little harder,” said Kate Lorig, R.N., Dr.P.H., a professor at the Patient Education Research Center at Stanford University School of Medicine, who studies patient-physician communication. Consider recruiting someone more assertive or knowledgeable about your condition than you are, which might help you to raise points that you otherwise wouldn’t.

Speak frankly. One-third of doctors in our survey said that they often encounter patients who are reluctant or embarrassed to talk about their symptoms. That makes the doctor’s job a lot harder, said Howard Beckman, M.D., a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Rochester who has done extensive research on doctor-patient interactions.

Nor can you always count on doctors to ask the right questions. Of patients who said their preventive-care doctors were aware of their emotional stress, only 26 percent said it was because the doctors had asked them directly about it.

Not only should your doctor know what symptoms are bothering you, but “patients should also be as honest as possible about what they think may be causing the problem,” Beckman said. If you fear your headaches indicate a brain tumor or an impending aneurysm, sharing those concerns could help. If the things you fear are outside the realm of possibility, the doctor can tell you so and save you a lot of stress; if not, voicing your gut instincts may lead to tests the doctor otherwise might not have ordered, and even a lifesaving early diagnosis.

Speaking up extends to asking for things you want from the doctor. In a study of patient visits with 45 physicians, patients who left with unvoiced desires--such as a referral to a specialist, medical equipment, or a different medication--were unhappier with their doctor and recovered more slowly than patients who made their desires known. Physicians, too, rated those encounters as more demanding.

Ignore drug ads. There’s another party in the examination room with you and your doctor: the pharmaceutical industry, which spends billions of dollars a year trying to get you to pester your doctor for expensive new brand-name drugs--and wining and dining doctors so that they’ll prescribe them.

Almost all the doctors we surveyed said they make at least some time to meet with pharmaceutical company representatives who arrive bearing free samples, gifts, and sales pitches for their drugs.

Twenty-two percent of physicians we surveyed said they field “I saw it on TV” requests quite often in a typical week. Patients most frequently ask about drugs for acid reflux, impotence, allergies, and insomnia--mainstays of the television ad lineups. Very few of the patients we surveyed--7 percent--admitted to asking for advertised drugs for their most bothersome health condition over the previous 12 months. Such requests were most likely from patients with insomnia or impotence. Forty-nine percent of patients who asked for a specific drug left the doctor’s office with the prescription they requested.

If you’re tempted to ask for a drug you saw advertised, don’t be offended if your doctor declines to prescribe it, as 54 percent of our surveyed physicians said they sometimes did. (Forty percent of doctors also said that advertising directly to consumers did not serve the public interest.)

Older drugs can be just as effective, have a longer safety record, and often cost less. The new drug might not be on your health plan’s list of approved medications; 60 percent of the doctors we surveyed complained about such restrictions.

Thirty-one percent of respondents who got prescriptions said their doctor didn’t adequately explain possible side effects, so be sure to ask about them. And 9 percent said their doctor didn’t review their other prescriptions to check for potentially harmful interactions with the new drug.

For recommendations on the best, most cost-effective drugs for a range of conditions, go to Best Buy Drugs.