Talk with Tom
Get the dispatches from the new world of work
Books II
I love those rare books about how professionals actually go about thinking about pertinent stuff. Hence, I'm mesmerized by How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D. The book does not beat up on docs per se, but it surely explores in detail the nonrational-human side of diagnosis and decision making and case management. Consider: "On average a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds." 291 pages of this? My answer is a wholehearted "yes," at least for me. It's fun, useful in my extensive work in healthcare, and indicative of individual-organizational decision making in general.
(Speaking of non-rational evaluations and decision-making, I just reread Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky. Though 25 years old, it remains the timely bible on nonrational thought processes. Kahneman won an economics Nobel for his work here. I read the book when it appeared in '82, and reread it every few years—it keeps me in touch with my roots. Hence, the odd success strategy below.) (FYI, Judgment under Uncertainty sits with Gould's Full House and Taleb's Fooled by Randomness in my "iconic pile"—the books that more or less "spiritually" guide my work—LOVE THE MESS!!)
ARCHIVES
Before blogging became all the rage, Tom was posting book reviews and Observations (essentially early blog posts) to this site. You can find the archives below.
What Tom's Reading Archives
OBSERVATIONS ARCHIVES
right now
What we're talking about
on the front page.
Comments
Tom - I deliver communication workshops for docs involving role-play with actors. Doctors when benchmarked against colleagues are mostly in the top quartile so we normally start by telling them we are attempting to help them move from ‘good’ to ‘great’ or ‘great’ to ‘excellent’
Sadly there are a minority of doctors who don’t recognise that they are not good at the listening bit. They are trained to make decisions so they move into auto pilot and feel they have to move on and not get bogged down in what they perceive as the ‘trivial.’ Attention to the ‘trivial’ is probably what the patient will remember most when asked to assess the doctor’s communication skills.
I have a good friend who is a family doctor and he always makes a personal note when consulting e.g. maybe he will note that ‘Mrs Smith’s’ daughter is about to be get married. The next time he sees Mrs Smith in three months time he will have that note on the screen before Mrs Smith comes in and the first question he will ask is ‘How did your daughters wedding go?’ – Patients are amazed he has ‘remembered’ that ‘trivial detail.’ Simple but effective
Posted by Trevor Gay at March 19, 2007 12:44 PM
I listened to an NPR interview with Dr. Groopman recently and he stated that one of the things that got him started down this path was that he made a terrible mistake while a young resident that resulted in a patient's death. He forgot to disassociate himself from his feelings about a patient and misdiagnosed a fatal problem as something trivial. The fact that he could recover from that and be a good doctor says much about him and now he has turned that episode into a positive experience designed to help others. I haven't read the book yet, but it's coming up on my list shortly. This doctor has authenticity desperately needed by all of us.
Posted by Mike at March 19, 2007 1:36 PM
Dear Tom,
Have you read 'Black Swan' by N N Taleb? If so, I'd like to have your comments / views. Thanks in advance.
Posted by Sriram at March 21, 2007 11:46 PM