The first tim
e I did a book club selection was after I had read a book and I was really excited to share it with you. That was in March 2016 and the book was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. If you missed the post about that terrific read, click here.
For the second book in our Healthy Matters book club – and for all future selections – I will post the book before I have read it and hopefully many of you will pick up a copy and read it as well. Then I hope we can have a good discussion about it -here on the blog, on the radio broadcast, and on Twitter. I really value using literature, the arts, the humanities, and so forth to help us all think about the practice of medicine. You can be part of that conversation!
So here’s the book I’d like you to considering reading: How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman. Then look for a post on this blog in mid-June in which I hope you will give me your feedback – let’s start an interactive discussion!
Why this book?
How Doctors Think is really a book for the lay audience. The author is a Harvard physician and author with terrific insight not only as a teaching physician but also as a patient himself. You may want to check out this list of articles he has written for the New Yorker; there are some gems in there.
Dr. Groopman wrote How Doctors Think in 2007 to help non-medical and medical people alike explore the process by which doctors make a clinical diagnosis. Dr. Groopman says that “this book is about what goes on in a doctor’s mind as he or she treats a patient.”
Do you ever wonder why your doctor is asking you those seemingly strange and intrusive questions? Do you ever get the sense that your doctor is not really listening to you? Have you ever wondered why it took so long and involved so many incorrect diagnoses before your doctor accurately found out what condition you actually have? Do you ever wish you could be more of an active partner in your health care as opposed to a passive observer?
And maybe most important, how can you as a patient help your doctor make the diagnosis?
Here is an extended audio interview with Dr. Groopman from NPR. You may wish to listen to it to stoke your interest in the book and the subject.
Please read the book and look for a post right here on MyHealthyMatters in mid-June in which I will give my thoughts on the book. I’ll post my reactions from an “insider’s” perspective as a physician who has made many diagnoses – some of which were indeed incorrect (hopefully the incorrect ones were in the minority!). And I’ll welcome your comments about what you thought.
OK, friends – start reading and join the conversation You have a month!
