How doctors think / Jerome Groopman

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Flesh-and-blood decision making -- Lessons from the heart -- Spinning plates -- Gatekeepers -- A new mother's challenge -- The uncertainty of the expert -- Surgery and satisfaction -- The eye of the beholder -- Marketing, money, and medical decisions -- In service of the soul -- Epilogue : a patient's questions.

On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing his symptoms within twelve seconds, in that short time, manydoctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrongâ??with catastrophic consequences. In this mythshattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err, and shows when and how they canâ??-with our helpâ??avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty,communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that call profoundly impact our health. A doctorâ??s specialty, the technology he relies on, his age andhis emotional state can all produce different sorts of mistakes,and few doctors are trained to think about how they thinkâ??torecognize when their cognition is going astray. This book is thefirst 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. In unraveling the sources of faulty diagnosis and treatment,Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviewswith some of the countryâ??s best doctors 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.