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How Doctors Think

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When Dr. Jerome Groopman was making his rounds as a young hospital resident, he misdiagnosed a patient's chest pain. She died.

Now, three decades on, Groopman is one of the country's most respected and widely-read physicians. He is also a Harvard med school professor and a writer for the New Yorker.

Now he's writing about how doctors really think when they're sizing up you and your health. You need to know this.

This hour On Point: how doctors think, with Dr. Jerome Groopman.


Quotes from the Show:

"We are taught in medical school to think in a deliberate, linear way. We mainly study cases on paper and everything is very calm and simple. The real world is very different. We learn by doing. And we look for patterns. ... We try to fit the symptoms, and the physical findings and the laboratory results into a pattern. And then we often go with that. About 80% of the time we're right." - Dr. Jerome Groopman.

Guest:

Dr. Jerome Groopman, chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, staff writer at The New Yorker, and author of "How Doctors Think."

This program aired on November 13, 2007.

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