Word: groopmans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...result of Groopman's journey is How Doctors Think (Houghton Mifflin; 307 pages), an engagingly written book that is must reading for every physician who cares for patients and every patient who wishes to get the best care. Groopman says patients can prompt broader, sharper and less prejudiced thinking by asking doctors open-ended questions and learning to identify some of their common thinking mistakes...
...Groopman describes this kind of "attribution error" in the case of a nervous young woman who kept losing weight even when prescribed a high-calorie diet. Her doctors, convinced that she was lying about her food intake, suspected anorexia or bulimia, but her problem, diagnosed after years of ill health, turned out to be celiac disease--an allergy to wheat. Had the patient been male or older or less anxious, the doctors might have got it right in the first place...
...tend to be influenced by the last experience we had or something that made a deep impression on us," Groopman says. So if it's January, your doctor has just seen 14 patients with the flu and you show up with muscle aches and a fever, he or she is more likely to say you have the flu--which is fine unless it's really meningitis or a reaction to a tetanus shot that you forgot to mention...
...just do something. Stand there," one of Groopman's mentors told him years ago when he was uncertain of a diagnosis. This buys a doctor time to think--which is especially important when trying to ensure that something hasn't been overlooked...
...Groopman cautions that emotions are more of an issue than most physicians like to admit. Doctors who are particularly fond of a patient have been known to miss the diagnosis of a life-threatening cancer because they just didn't want it to be true. But negative emotions can be just as blinding, sometimes stopping a doctor from going the extra mile. "If you sense that your doctor is irritated with you, that he or she doesn't like you," says Groopman, "then it's time to get a new doctor." Studies show that most patients are pretty accurate...