How Doctors Think

…the sickest patients are the least liked by doctors, and…very sick people sense this disaffection.  Overall, doctors tend to like healthier people more.

That is from Jerome Groopman’s new and excellent How Doctors Think.  The book claims that by asking your doctor better questions, you can help him or her overcome cognitive and emotional biases.  For instance doctors too frequently assume that the recent cases they have seen constitute a real trend, or they too quickly assume that what they see fits a known medical pattern.  Here is one story on the book.  Here are Groopman’s New Yorker articles.  Here is Groopman summarizing the book in The New Yorker.