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. The patient stories are told with Groopman's customary attention to character and emotion. 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 ranger's physique and chiseled features reminded him of a young Clint Eastwood-all 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.'

And part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often don't realize.'Īttribution errors happen when a doctor's diagnostic cogitations are shaped by a particular stereotype. Is mostly about how these doctors get it right, and about why they sometimes get it wrong: 'ost errors are mistakes in thinking. , which take on a wide variety of complex medical conditions, evocatively communicating the tensions and emotions of both doctors and patients.īut this book is something different: a sustained, incisive and sometimes agonized inquiry into the processes by which medical minds-brilliant, experienced, highly erudite medical minds-synthesize information and understand illness. Most readers will knowJerome Groopman from his essays in the New Yorker I wish I had read this book when I was in medical school, and I'm glad I've read it now.

How doctors think book