Word: patients
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes in scrubs, the title character of House can solve just about any medical mystery. That's not altogether unrealistic, says Dr. Lisa Sanders, the show's technical adviser. Sanders, an internist and the author of Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis, talked to TIME about House's flesh-and-blood counterparts, how we can teach more doctors to be like them and how patients can help. (Read a TIME special report on health care...
...recurring themes in the book is the fact that too few doctors sit down and hear out the patient's story. Why is that? It's hard to listen to a story that's not told well. That's a terrible thing to say, but we all feel this. You know, when we're at the dinner table and Uncle Dave is telling a long, windy story, what you're really thinking is, "Where is this going? What is the bottom line?" That kind of impatience is not just limited to the dinner table; that's often how doctors feel...
...more human way, and to recognize that there are emotions on both sides contributing to the successes and failures. Absolutely. I think one of the great things about House is that often in solving the problem, it's something in his real life that triggers a thought about his patient. I think fundamentally what doctors and patients both have to remember is that the diagnosis process is a collaboration between two experts: the doctor, who is an expert on the body and disease in general, and the patient, who is the expert on this body and this disease and these...
...else do you explain doctors' tendency to rely too much on high-tech testing? Just as patients feel better when they're getting scans and blood tests and all these things, I think the doctor has the same response. When you see that a patient is doing badly, a kind of low-level fear comes over a doctor, an anxiety that they're going to miss something. We feel that the tests are better than anything else we can do. And I just don't know that that's the case. (Watch TIME's video "Uninsured Again...
...patients help themselves get the best diagnosis? The most important thing that the patient can do is tell their story. Doctors often interrupt patients. There have been several studies done that show that on average, doctors let patients talk for 20 seconds before interrupting. Some doctors interrupted after only three seconds. Once interrupted, patients are often reluctant to go back to their story. After you answer the doctor's question, say, "Let me just go back and tell you what happened." I also think patients need to be empowered to ask doctors to explain things in language they can understand...