When Your Doctor Doesn't Know Best - Hardcover

Podell, Richard N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671871129 ISBN 13: 9780671871123

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1995

Synopsis

Providing a guide for every doctor visit, a self-help book confronts the range of medical error--from tests and diagnoses to drugs and procedures--and tells exactly what to do to anticipate, prevent, or reverse mistakes. 35,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Even physicians can make mistakes. And alas, points out Podell (Doctor, Why Am I So Tired?), a clinical professor of family medicine at New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, medical mistakes will continue to occur. Yet patients can reduce the likelihood that medical mistakes will endanger them. Using realistic scenarios-the physician who neglects to ask patients specific questions about their health history or avoids asking potentially embarrassing questions, or patients who do not volunteer information about their health or ask enough questions-Podell shows the genesis of some common kinds of medical errors. Compounding such problems, he says, is a health care system that has become so complex and depersonalized that it offers increasing leeway for medical mistakes. The best way patients can protect themselves? In his well-paced presentation, Podell emphasizes the importance of taking leadership in your health care whenever you suspect a problem with the treatment you're receiving-even if you can't put a finger on it. To that end, he suggests questions that should be asked of one's health care provider-and recommends what to do if you disagree. He notes that only in this way can a patient become an effective partner with a doctor. Also included are a chapter on making the health care system work for you, explaining how to get the best care, whether a patient has a fee-for-service insurance policy or makes use of health maintenance organizations, individual practice associations or clinics.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book's subtitle says it all. Using case histories, the authors provide a com-pendium of potential errors in the under- or overdiagnosis and treatment of illnesses and disorders. The proactive health consumer will find here a guide to what can go wrong in any given encounter with a physician, what to watch out for, and how to take corrective action. This is a useful book for learning to ask the right questions and for opening or continuing a dialog with one's healthcare provider. The guidelines, reviewed by a raft of board-certified medical specialists, are current. Podell is a private practitioner, medical writer, and clinical professor at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Recommended for health collections.
Anne C. Tomlin, Auburn Memorial Hospital Lib., N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0671871129
• ISBN 13: 9780671871123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416