Ever wondered how doctors think? We all have sat in front of a doctor at one point in our lives. We come to him with our symtoms, automatically trusting his judgement, expecting it to be accurate and looking to him to ease and cure whatever pain we are having. We literally put our lives in their hands. In The New Yorker's Medical Dispatches, Jerome Groopman wrote about how doctor's think in What's the trouble?
It makes for an interesting look at how doctors arrive at a diagnosis, the factors at play whenever they see patients and the things that could go wrong. Thankfully, the doctors in the article had the humility and courage to accept their misdiagnosis, talk about it with colleagues and discuss ways of avoiding the same mistakes in the future. Doctors are, afterall, human too.