Status Updates From How Doctors Think

I like how this book emphasizes the importance of a primary care visit not being all about efficiency and instead being about asking open-ended questions to get to the root of the patient’s problem. Working at Epic, it’s important for me to realize that electronic technology “risks more cognitive errors, because the doctor’s mind is set on filling in the blanks in the template.”

Important questions to ask physicians to slow down their thinking and avoid cognitive errors: What’s the worst thing this could be? What body parts are near where I am having my symptoms/what body parts might be causing the symptoms?

So far, pretty interesting…it’s interesting learning that most medical errors (incorrect diagnoses and treatments) are from mistakes in thinking and not technical errors. Also, the cross between feeling and thinking is mentioned: part of what causes cognitive errors that result in medical errors are inner feelings, which need to be recognized.