A New Yorker staff writer, bestselling author, and professor at Harvard Medical School unravels the mystery of how doctors figure out the best treatments--or fail to do so. This book describes the warning signs of flawed medical thinking and offers intelligent questions patients can ask. On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at ...
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A New Yorker staff writer, bestselling author, and professor at Harvard Medical School unravels the mystery of how doctors figure out the best treatments--or fail to do so. This book describes the warning signs of flawed medical thinking and offers intelligent questions patients can ask. On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong--with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. He explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can-- with our help--avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can have a profound impact on our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking, offering direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country's best physicians, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.
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"How Doctors Think," by Jerome Groopman, M.D., is surprisingly readable. I would describe the book as a "call to confidence" for laypeople, otherwise known as "patients." It explores the shadowy realms of cognition, wherein most medical mistakes occur. A misdiagnosis usually occurs because of cognitive, not technical, errors, regardless of the good intentions of the physician. Because of the training methods, unconscious stereotypes, and personal history of any given doctor treating any given patient, certain cognitive patterns will come into play that may lead to a misdiagnosis if the patient lacks the confidence to ask helpful questions of his or her doctor. The doctor NEEDS this level of action from his or her patient in order to remain open to all possibilities, and to provide the best care that they are able. Groopman's book openly and honestly lays out where mistakes occur using real life examples of miraculous catches and traumatic misdiagnoses, and explains clearly what specific questions a patient should feel confident in asking his/her doctor.
wwheele1
Nov 13, 2008
Excellent
Worth reading for both patients and health professionals
London54
Sep 6, 2007
Good Medicine
My folks sent me this book in the wake of our teenage son experiencing chronic daily headaches and migraines, an episode that kept him out of school for five weeks and had us going from one expert to another for answers -- and a cure.
What I learned from Dr. Groopman is essentially what I already knew -- that the health insurance system causes doctors to be in too big a hurry, that they make mistakes in diagnosis, that the patient (or his/her family) must be dogged in the pursuit of answers. But (and this is a big but) what this Harvard Medical School doctor gave me was the confidence that I lacked as a patient advocate. He advises the reader to never accept a doctor's dismissive statement, "We have seen this before." He urges patients to challenge the doctor with such questions as, ?Is there anything that doesn?t fit your diagnosis?? and ?Is it possible I have more than one problem??
My son still gets his headaches, but thanks to this book, we are armed with new confidence to continue the search for answers.
