Word: groopmans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Harvard hematologist Jerome Groopman, who is a friend of the child's parents, the missed diagnosis was more than just a cautionary tale. It was the start of an investigative journey. "People talk about technical errors in medicine, but no one talks about thinking errors," he explains in an interview. "I realized I had no framework for understanding these kinds of problems...
...next three years--in addition to seeing patients and doing research, plus his gig as a staff writer for the New Yorker--Groopman began to intensively examine how doctors think and how they get sidetracked from the truth. He learned that about 80% of medical mistakes are the result of predictable mental traps, or cognitive errors, that bedevil all human beings. Only 20% are due to technical mishaps--mixed-up test results or hard-to-decipher handwriting--that typically loom larger in patients' minds and on television shows...
...dangerous impulse toward excess. Specialists are typically paid much more to do a procedure than the family doctor who takes the time to talk through the treatment options. A doctor who does a biopsy may be paid as much as $1,600 for 15 minutes' work, notes Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School. "If you're an internist, you can easily spend an hour with a family where a member has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's or breast cancer, and be paid $100. So there's this disconnect between what's valued and reimbursement...
Harvard's Groopman, who has written three books about the doctor-patient relationship, lived through his own doctor-patient nightmare. It started when his son had a medical emergency in July, which every doctor knows is the worst of all months to go to a teaching hospital. "The new interns and residents begin July 1," he explains. "There's a very morbid joke: don't get sick on the July 4 weekend." But years ago, when he and his wife were new parents, they were visiting her family in Connecticut for the holiday when their 9-month-old son became...
...seen by a brand-new surgical resident, who diagnosed an intestinal obstruction. "This resident said to my wife--this is now midnight--'Well, in my experience, this can wait until morning.'" Since his experience at that point in his residency amounted to roughly three days on the job, the Groopmans pulled rank. They called someone who called someone who happened to be home on the holiday, and they wound up with a senior surgeon who came in, did an emergency operation at 3 a.m. and, Groopman says, saved his son's life...