Video Introduction to Critical Decisions
Here is my latest Critical Decisions video. This one gives a broad introduction to the reasons I wrote the book.
Here is my latest Critical Decisions video. This one gives a broad introduction to the reasons I wrote the book.
I got an email recently from someone who read Critical Decisions, and who said it resonated with her in part because of work she does with a breast cancer hot line. “I’ve been volunteering as a Helpline worker for Living Beyond Breast Cancer. We get a lot of calls from women who seem to have…
When is the treatment worse than the disease? When the high costs associated with care become a financial burden for patients and in many cases prevent them from protecting their health, contends Peter Ubel, MD, a 2007 recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. “We have reached a…
Elizabeth’s breast cancer had already spread to her bones and was now invading lymph nodes in her right armpit, causing painful swelling that kept her up at night. Today, however, as she walked into her oncologist’s office, Elizabeth felt like things were under control. “All right, so how is your arm?” the oncologist asked. “Actually,…
I know, I know: I usually write about health and healthcare; why should anyone care about my opinion on whether Larry Summers should be Federal Reserve Chair? As it turns out, my work on doctor/patient communication has given me insight into the danger of judging job candidates—be they physicians or Federal Reserve chairs—based purely on…
As if being diagnosed with breast cancer wasn’t bad enough, many women with this diagnosis face complicated decisions about what kind of medicine or chemotherapy to take, if any, to reduce their chance of cancer recurrence. As I discussed in a recent post, the mathematics of such decisions can be hard to comprehend for many patients. …
Andrews was easily the most anxious patient I took care of that month, a gray Michigan February (is there any other kind?) which I spent in the hospital caring for patients admitted to the general medical ward at the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center. (Andrews is a pseudonym, as are all the patients I blog about, unless…