Andrea Roosa
Pre-Health Book Report
What Doctor’s Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
By: Danielle Ofri
“Positive emotions tend to be associated with a more global view of a situation (“the forest”) and more flexibility in problem solving. Negative emotions tend to diminish the importance of the bigger picture in favor of the smaller details (“the trees”). In cognitive psychology studies, subjects with negative emotions are more prone to anchoring bias—that is, latching on to a single detail at the expense of others. Anchoring bias is a potent source of diagnostic error, causing doctors to stick with an initial impression and avoid considering conflicting data. Subjects with positive emotions are also prone to bias; they are more likely to succumb to attribution bias. In medicine, this is the tendency to attribute a disease to who the patient is (a drug user, say) rather than what the situation is (exposure to bacteria, for example).” –Danielle Ofri …show more content…
The emotions of witnessing someone suffering can be unbearable as a human being. Which is something physicians struggle with almost every day, no matter how much experience they have within their field. This book describes the emotional impact on trainees and physicians and the effects that it has on the care they can provide to their patients.
I would highly recommend this book to someone who is either thinking about going into the medical field, or to someone who is already in situations and is experiencing the same difficulties. In this book there are many difficult stories told by doctors and physicians who have been in these emotional situations.
Ofri describes a tragic event that occurred during the residency of a woman named Eva. She helped deliver a baby expecting to have asphyxiation within minutes of being born because of lack of amniotic fluid in the
Pre-Health Book Report
What Doctor’s Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
By: Danielle Ofri
“Positive emotions tend to be associated with a more global view of a situation (“the forest”) and more flexibility in problem solving. Negative emotions tend to diminish the importance of the bigger picture in favor of the smaller details (“the trees”). In cognitive psychology studies, subjects with negative emotions are more prone to anchoring bias—that is, latching on to a single detail at the expense of others. Anchoring bias is a potent source of diagnostic error, causing doctors to stick with an initial impression and avoid considering conflicting data. Subjects with positive emotions are also prone to bias; they are more likely to succumb to attribution bias. In medicine, this is the tendency to attribute a disease to who the patient is (a drug user, say) rather than what the situation is (exposure to bacteria, for example).” –Danielle Ofri …show more content…
The emotions of witnessing someone suffering can be unbearable as a human being. Which is something physicians struggle with almost every day, no matter how much experience they have within their field. This book describes the emotional impact on trainees and physicians and the effects that it has on the care they can provide to their patients.
I would highly recommend this book to someone who is either thinking about going into the medical field, or to someone who is already in situations and is experiencing the same difficulties. In this book there are many difficult stories told by doctors and physicians who have been in these emotional situations.
Ofri describes a tragic event that occurred during the residency of a woman named Eva. She helped deliver a baby expecting to have asphyxiation within minutes of being born because of lack of amniotic fluid in the