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Jerome E Groopman - How Doctors Think

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Jerome E Groopman How Doctors Think
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From Publishers Weekly *Starred Review.* Signature*Reviewed by* Perri KlassI wish I had read this book when I was in medical school, and Im glad Ive read it now. Most readers will knowJerome Groopman from his essays in the *New Yorker*, which take on a wide variety of complex medical conditions, evocatively communicating the tensions and emotions of both doctors and patients.But this book is something different: a sustained, incisive and sometimes agonized inquiry into the processes by which medical mindsbrilliant, experienced, highly erudite medical mindssynthesize information and understand illness. *How Doctors Think *is mostly about how these doctors get it right, and about why they sometimes get it wrong: [m]ost errors are mistakes in thinking. And part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often dont realize. Attribution errors happen when a doctors diagnostic cogitations are shaped by a particular stereotype. It can be negative: when five doctors fail to diagnose an endocrinologic tumor causing peculiar symptoms in a persistently complaining, melodramatic menopausal woman who quite accurately describes herself as kooky. But positive feelings also get in the way; an emergency room doctor misses unstable angina in a forest ranger because the rangers physique and chiseled features reminded him of a young Clint Eastwoodall strong associations with health and vigor. Other errors occur when a patient is irreversibly classified with a particular syndrome: diagnosis momentum, like a boulder rolling down a mountain, gains enough force to crush anything in its way. The patient stories are told with Groopmans customary attention to character and emotion. And there is great care and concern for the epistemology of medical knowledge, and a sense of life-and-death urgency in analyzing the well-intentioned thought processes of the highly trained. I have never read elsewhere this kind of discussion of the ambiguities besetting the superspecializedthe doctors on whom the rest of us depend: Specialization in medicine confers a false sense of certainty. *How Doctors Think *helped me understand my own thought processes and my colleagueseven as it left me chastened and dazzled by turns. Every reflective doctor will learn from this bookand every prospective patient will find thoughtful advice for communicating successfully in the medical setting and getting better care.Many of the physicians Dr. Groopman writes about are visionaries and heroes; their diagnostic and therapeutic triumphs are astounding. And these are the doctors who are, like the author, willing to anatomize their own serious errors. This passionate honesty gives the book an immediacy and an eloquence that will resonate with anyone interested in medicine, science or the cruel beauties of those human endeavors which engage mortal stakes. *(Mar. 19)**Klass is professor of journalism and pediatrics at NYU. Her most recent book is* Every Mother Is a Daughter*, with Sheila Solomon Klass.* Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine Jerome Groopman, Harvard professor of medicine, AIDS and cancer researcher, and *New Yorker* staff writer in medicine and biology, isnt new to the popular medical-writing scene. Before *How Doctors Think*, he penned three other books*The Anatomy of Hope*, *Second Opinions*, and *The Measure of Our Days*that explore the role of art in the hard science of medicine. Here, Groopmans readable prose emphasizes the human element, the give-and-take so important to successful diagnosis and treatment. One critic, however, compares the books medical pyrotechnics to an episode of the medical show *House*, while another takes issue with the authors stance against Big Pharma. For the most part, critics see Groopmans latest effort as a compelling meditation on the interactions between doctors and patientsan effort reminding us that mistakes and miscommunications can be minimized but not eliminated. *Copyright 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.*

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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK
2007

Copyright 2007 by Jerome Groopman
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Visit our Web site: www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Groopman, Jerome E.
How doctors think / Jerome Groopman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN -13: 978-0-618-61003-7
ISBN -10: 0-618-61003-0
1. MedicineDecision making. 2. Medical logic.
3. PhysiciansPsychology. 1. Title.
R723.5.G75 2007
610dc22 2006035718

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Robert Overholtzer

MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The illustration on page 139 is by Michael Prendergast

AUTHOR'S NOTE
In order to protect their privacy, the names and certain identifying
characteristics of all of the patients whose medical histories are
described in this book have been changed. In addition, Dr. Karen
Delgado, Dr. Bert Foyer, Dr. Wheeler, Rick Duggan, and
Drs. A, B, C, D, and E are fictitious names.

FOR MY MOTHER
Ayshet chayil
( a woman of valor)

We carve out order by leaving the
disorderly parts out.
William James

Contents

Introduction

1. Flesh-and-Blood Decision-Making

2. Lessons from the Heart

3. Spinning Plates

4. Gatekeepers

5. A New Mother's Challenge

6. The Uncertainty of the Expert

7. Surgery and Satisfaction

8. The Eye of the Beholder

9. Marketing, Money, and Medical Decisions

10. In Service of the Soul

Epilogue: A Patient's Questions

***

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

INDEX

Introduction

A NNE DODGE HAD LOST COUNT of all the doctors she had seen over the past fifteen years. She guessed it was close to thirty. Now, two days after Christmas 2004, on a surprisingly mild morning, she was driving again into Boston to see yet another physician. Her primary care doctor had opposed the trip, arguing that Anne's problems were so long-standing and so well defined that this consultation would be useless. But her boyfriend had stubbornly insisted. Anne told herself the visit would mollify her boyfriend and she would be back home by midday.

Anne is in her thirties, with sandy brown hair and soft blue eyes. She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, one of four sisters. No one had had an illness like hers. Around age twenty, she found that food did not agree with her. After a meal, she would feel as if a hand were gripping her stomach and twisting it. The nausea and pain were so intense that occasionally she vomited. Her family doctor examined her and found nothing wrong. He gave her antacids. But the symptoms continued. Anne lost her appetite and had to force herself to eat; then she'd feel sick and quietly retreat to the bathroom to regurgitate. Her general practitioner suspected what was wrong, but to be sure he referred her to a psychiatrist, and the diagnosis was made: anorexia nervosa with bulimia, a disorder marked by vomiting and an aversion to food. If the condition was not corrected, she could starve to death.

Over the years, Anne had seen many internists for her primary care before settling on her current one, a woman whose practice was devoted to patients with eating disorders. Anne was also evaluated by numerous specialists: endocrinologists, orthopedists, hematologists, infectious disease doctors, and, of course, psychologists and psychiatrists. She had been treated with four different antidepressants and had undergone weekly talk therapy. Nutritionists closely monitored her daily caloric intake.

But Anne's health continued to deteriorate, and the past twelve months had been the most miserable of her life. Her red blood cell count and platelets had dropped to perilous levels. A bone marrow biopsy showed very few developing cells. The two hematologists Anne had consulted attributed the low blood counts to her nutritional deficiency. Anne also had severe osteoporosis. One endocrinologist said her bones were like those of a woman in her eighties, from a lack of vitamin D and calcium. An orthopedist diagnosed a hairline fracture of the metatarsal bone of her foot. There were also signs that her immune system was failing; she suffered a series of infections, including meningitis. She was hospitalized four times in 2004 in a mental health facility so she could try to gain weight under supervision.

To restore her system, her internist had told Anne to consume three thousand calories a day, mostly in easily digested carbohydrates like cereals and pasta. But the more Anne ate, the worse she felt. Not only was she seized by intense nausea and the urge to vomit, but recently she had severe intestinal cramps and diarrhea. Her doctor said she had developed irritable bowel syndrome, a disorder associated with psychological stress. By December, Anne's weight dropped to eighty-two pounds. Although she said she was forcing down close to three thousand calories, her internist and her psychiatrist took the steady loss of weight as a sure sign that Anne was not telling the truth.

That day Anne was seeing Dr. Myron Falchuk, a gastroenterologist. Falchuk had already gotten her medical records, and her internist had told him that Anne's irritable bowel syndrome was yet another manifestation of her deteriorating mental health. Falchuk heard in the doctor's recitation of the case the implicit message that his role was to examine Anne's abdomen, which had been poked and prodded many times by many physicians, and to reassure her that irritable bowel syndrome, while uncomfortable and annoying, should be treated as the internist had recommended, with an appropriate diet and tranquilizers.

But that is exactly what Falchuk did not do. Instead, he began to question, and listen, and observe, and then to think differently about Anne's case. And by doing so, he saved her life, because for fifteen years a key aspect of her illness had been missed.

This book is about what goes on in a doctor's mind as he or she treats a patient. The idea for it came to me unexpectedly, on a September morning three years ago while I was on rounds with a group of interns, residents, and medical students. I was the attending physician on "general medicine," meaning that it was my responsibility to guide this team of trainees in its care of patients with a wide variety of clinical problems, not just those in my own specialties of blood diseases, cancer, and AIDS. There were patients on our ward with pneumonia, diabetes, and other common ailments, but there were also some with symptoms that did not readily suggest a diagnosis, or with maladies for which there was a range of possible treatments, where no one therapy was clearly superior to the others.

I like to conduct rounds in a traditional way. One member of the team first presents the salient aspects of the case and then we move as a group to the bedside, where we talk to the patient and examine him. The team then returns to the conference room to discuss the problem. I follow a Socratic method in the discussion, encouraging the students and residents to challenge each other, and challenge me, with their ideas. But at the end of rounds on that September morning I found myself feeling disturbed. I was concerned about the lack of give-and-take among the trainees, but even more I was disappointed with myself as their teacher. I concluded that these very bright and very affable medical students, interns, and residents all too often failed to question cogently or listen carefully or observe keenly. They were not thinking deeply about their patients' problems. Something was profoundly wrong with the way they were learning to solve clinical puzzles and care for people.

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