‘Your Medical Mind’ explored
Take this scenario: A patient has discovered a lump on her thyroid but three biopsies have failed to determine if it is cancerous or not. Trying to sort out the confusing choices, she, as many patients do, asks her physician, “What would you do?” The answer may seem to add to the confusion, but it reflects a new paradigm proposed by Harvard doctors and best-selling authors Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, a couple who believes that understanding your medical mindset — and that of your doctor — will help guide your decisions. “If it were me, I would watch and wait. If it were my husband, he would have had surgery yesterday,” said Hartzband. That’s because Hartzband and Groopman, while both distinguished doctors, have different “medical minds,” or different approaches for wading through the myriad of conflicting advice from medical experts and drug and insurance companies. The pair expounded on that concept, the subject...