If I may add one sentence to your #5, it would be : Listen to what your patient is saying about their past medical history, diagnoses, and test results; if there’s a chronic issue going on, they’ve probably got a good idea what has been tried and what might possibly work or not.

My husband, a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump, was on a daytrip with me many years back (2005, before pumps were as widely used) to have lunch with a friend. He had just replaced his insertion site that morning, and halfway through lunch realized his sugar numbers weren’t going down even with having programmed multiple units of insulin. Rather than make the potentially 2 hours’ drive back to get his personal syringes or a new site that wouldn’t be blocked or backed up (by scar tissue, bubbles, or blood in the tube) we decided to go quickly to the ER at the local hospital and ask for an injection of 5 or so units of insulin to quickly remedy the high blood sugar and keep from developing worse results. Instead, theppppy admitted him and put him on a saline drip, refusing to consider giving any insulin in hopes that the saline would magically bring his number down. Even after the point where the pump’s quick-acting insulin could possibly still be active (2 to 3 hours later), they still refused, not giving him an injection until 20 HOURS LATER, and refusing to let him go home because they needed to observe him. If they had only listened to our description of what it means to be a type 1 diabetic and how the pump works (the doctors and nurses alike kept asking to see it because they'd never seen one in person), he might not have gotten so sick that weekend and the following week.