The Review
“The eyes cannot see what the mind doesn’t know.” But what makes the medical diagnosis even more mysterious, “even if you know about an illness, you may not think of it if a patient presents with an unusual version of the disease.” This book starts with the story of a patient with Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome; Dr.Sanders skillfully weaves the art of diagnosis, including the art of history taking, physical examination and how teaching these skills to the budding doctors have evolved overtime. She also crafts the limitations of medical management, patient’s compliance; and ingenious storytelling tools to overcome it. Dr.Sanders goes on to explain, “the doctors ability to give the patient’s story back to the patient, in a form that will allow them to understand what their illness, and what it means” helps patients gain control, and enhances their compliance. To take this weaving analogy further, the warp of the book is the art of diagnosis, available technology, including google, limitations of the tests, costs, bias and the controls in our healthcare system to keep the hospitals accountable. The Weft are the various stories including one on Hodgkin’s lymphoma to chronic lyme’s disease, to surgical checklists which have been pivotal to decreased medical errors, to last but not the least Gregory House’s famous line, “Everybody Lies.” Dr.Sanders reminds us that “a story that helps the patient makes sense of even a devastating illness is a story that heals.”
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