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Tag: Jerome Groopman

What Doctors Think

A number of years ago, Dr. Jerome Groopman published a wonderful book for the benefit of patients and their physicians, entitled How Doctors Think. It is an excellent description, illustrated by anecdotes, of the cognitive processes by which doctors arrive at diagnoses, and the pitfalls that are inherent in such calculations owing to the inherent strengths and weaknesses of human thought processes. For example, our tendency to consider conditions that we have seen recently, or those for which can easily imagine examples, is one habit discussed in some depth. It is a fascinating read (or in my case, listen, as I heard it on a CD in my car over the course of a couple of weeks.)

So Dr. Groopman has exposed well how doctors think. But how often do we reveal just what we are thinking? No more often, in my opinion, than we reveal our inner thoughts to friends and relatives in our personal lives – and in fact, considerably less often if we value our professional success. We occasionally let slip our attitudes in a moment of carelessness, a gesture, or the infrequent loss of temper. But for the most part, we try to embody the ideal of “equanimitas” that was advocated by one of our icons of modern medicine, the great doctor William Osler. There have been many learned treatises on this quality as to its benefits to a physician and his patients, and I have little of great insight to add on that topic.

But wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally allow ourselves to express what we really think?  I always enjoy arriving home  – usually somewhat later than I promised – to relate some of the triumphs and tragedies of the battles of the day. And this, of course, is when I get to say what I really think. It has occurred to me that I might even collect enough material to publish my own book, What Doctors Think.

My wife suggested an alternative or a sequel entitled Do Doctors Think?

I am choosing to ignore the suggestion for the purposes of this post.

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How Patients Think

Recently, I had a conversation with Shannon Brownlee (the widely respected science journalist and acting director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation) about whether men should continue to have access to the PSA test for prostate cancer screening, despite the overwhelming evidence that it extends few, if any, lives and harms many more men than it benefits. She felt that if patients could be provided with truly unbiased information and appropriate decision aids, they should still be able to choose to have the test (and have it covered by medical insurance). Believing that one of the most important roles of doctors is to prevent patients from making bad decisions, I disagreed.

After reading Your Medical Mind, the new book by Harvard oncologist and New Yorker columnist Jerome Groopman, I think he would probably side with Brownlee’s point of view. Groopman, whose authoring credits include the 2007 bestseller How Doctors Think, and wife Pamela Hartzband, MD have written a kind of sequel to that book that could have easily been titled How Patients Think. Drawing on interviews with dozens of patients about a wide variety of medical decisions – from starting a cholesterol-lowering drug, to having knee surgery, to accepting or refusing heroic end-of-life interventions – the authors explore many of the factors that influence people’s health-related choices. The result is a compelling narrative that seamlessly blends “rational” factors such as interpreting medical statistics and decision analysis with personal factors such as past experience, emotional states, and personality styles.

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Of Zebras, Rare Diseases, and Google

When you hear hoof beats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra.

Medical aphorism on the rarity of rare diseases

A rare or “orphan” disease affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. There are more than 6,000 rare disorders that, taken together, affect approximately 25 million Americans.

National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD)

I have been asked to speak before a group of seniors about rare diseases. The thought fills me with trepidation. I am not an expert on rare diseases. There are so many of them. I fear being misquoted or misunderstood. I worry about malpractice implications, even though I am no longer in practice.

Nevertheless I am going to give the seniors my two cents worth, which is about what my opinion is worth. The temptation is irresistible. “To talk of diseases,” as Sir William Osler said, “is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.”Continue reading…

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