Book Review: How Doctors Think (2007)

Dr. Jerome Groopman is an internal medicine physician at Harvard Medical School and has written a number of best selling books as well as frequent columns in The New Yorker. His recent book, How Doctors Think, is another New York Times bestseller and has received rave reviews from most sources.  I read this book during my fourth year of medical school and wished I read it earlier.  The book delves into the art of diagnosis and treatment and focuses on parts of these skills that are rarely discussed in medical school.  Dr. Groopman explains that many of the decisions we make as physicians depend on inner feelings and tendencies that even we are not always aware of.  If physicians are able to understand these tendencies, we will be better equipped to make correct decisions and less likely to make incorrect ones.  This is a very good book, one that will help medical students in their career and one that will allow patients to better understand their doctor.  I highly recommend it.  Below is Dr. Groopman’s biography from Amazon.com…

Jerome Groopman, M.D., holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He has published more than 150 scientific articles. He is also a staff writer at The New Yorker and has written editorials on policy issues for the New Republic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller The Anatomy of Hope, Second Opinions, and The Measure of Our Days. Groopman lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.