"Who You See Is What You Get."

Last updated on May 25, 2020

I have been listening to the audio-book “How Doctors Think” by Dr. Jerome Groopman for the last few days. I will write a review when I have listened to it fully — and may be one more time — but something  I heard today kept me thinking.

Dr. Groopman describes how doctors sometimes are influenced by their own personal experiences with some medicines, and may tend to prescribe certain drugs or not to prescribe them to their patients. If it is a drug that worked well for them personally, then there is sometimes a tendency to trust the drug to work wonders for their patients. Another thing that he points out is how a common symptom can be viewed differently by doctors with different specialization while trying to arrive at an initial diagnosis.

For example, a symptom like lower back pain could be the result of many different causes:  spinal injury, slipped-disc, abdominal infections, rheumatism, and so on.  So the initial tests that the doctor would consider for a patient with such a pain can be influenced by the area of specialization of the doctor, hence the expression “Who you see is what you get.”

These are just a couple of many such interesting topics discussed in the book. I am hoping to write a full review shortly.