What Doctors Get Wrong: Your Wishes

Doctors may be good (or not) at diagnosing health problems, but they are definitely not good when it comes to listening to what their patients want. That’s  the conclusion of researchers at the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, who looked at several studies of what patients said and what doctors heard. The BBC reports that in one study, doctors believed that 71 percent of patients with breast cancer rate keeping their breast as a top priority, but the figure reported by patients was just 7 percent. Another study found that 40 percent fewer patients preferred surgery for benign prostate disease once they were informed about the risks of sexual dysfunction, and in another study of dementia, patients placed substantially less importance than doctors believed on the continuation of life with severely declining brain function. Read more from the BBC. Read the study here.