Can refocusing conversations between doctors and their patients lead to better health? Despite modern medicine’s infatuation with high-tech gadgetry, the single most powerful diagnostic tool is the doctor-patient conversation, which can uncover the lion’s share of illnesses. However, what patients say and what doctors hear are often two vastly different things. Patients, anxious to convey their symptoms, feel an urgency to “make their case” to their doctors. Doctors, under pressure to be efficient, multitask while patients speak and often miss the key elements. Add in stereotypes, unconscious bias, conflicting agendas, and fear of lawsuits and the risk of misdiagnosis and medical errors multiplies dangerously. Though the gulf between what patients say and what doctors hear is often wide, Dr. Danielle Ofri proves that it doesn’t have to be. Through the powerfully resonant human stories that Dr. Ofri’s writing is renowned for, she explores the high-stakes world of doctor-patient communication that we all must navigate. Reporting on the latest research studies and interviewing scholars, doctors, and patients, Dr. Ofri reveals how better communication can lead to better health for all of us.

The last time you went to your doctor, you might have emerged feeling dissatisfied and disoriented. Nothing was clear after you left the office, and you don't know whether it's your fault or the doctor's. But that's beside the point: the important thing is to identify the problem at the root of this experience and take steps to change it. Talking to Your Doctor helps readers navigate the new, more promising waters of doctor-patient collaboration, starting at the simplest and most human interaction--the conversation between two people in a room--and ending with the benefits that can be obtained by cultivating an effective partnership. While patients need to take control of the visit and set their agenda, the latest research shows that doctors and patients need to connect on a more emotional level as well. In Talking to Your Doctor, readers will: -Learn how to talk to your doctor--and get your doctor to talk to you -Discover the science of doctor-patient communication and its relevance to the lay public -Remake the relationship with your doctor, and our health care system, on the basis of good communication -Make sure your visit with the doctor is productive and meets your needs -Help yourself and others avoid over-testing and over-treatment Starting with the conversation can redress imbalances and put the relationship of doctor and patient, and eventually the entire health care system, back on a healthy footing. Using illuminating model dialogues, real transcripts from the clinic and hospital, resources for communication improvement, and a brief history of doctor-patient communication, the author helps readers develop strategies for obtaining better care from their doctors, from the minute they step into the exam room.

For many doctors, their role as powerful healer precludes thoughts of ever getting sick themselves. When they do, it initiates a profound shift of awareness-- not only in their sense of their selves, which is invariably bound up with the "invincible doctor" role, but in the way that they view their patients and the doctor-patient relationship. While some books have been written from first-person perspectives on doctors who get sick-- by Oliver Sacks among them-- and TV shows like "House" touch on the topic, never has there been a "systematic, integrated look" at what the experience is like for doctors who get sick, and what it can teach us about our current health care system and more broadly, the experience of becoming ill.The psychiatrist Robert Klitzman here weaves together gripping first-person accounts of the experience of doctors who fall ill and see the other side of the coin, as a patient. The accounts reveal how dramatic this transformation can be-- a spiritual journey for some, a radical change of identity for others, and for some a new way of looking at the risks and benefits of treatment options. For most however it forever changes the way they treat their own patients. These questions are important not just on a human interest level, but for what they teach us about medicine in America today. While medical technology advances, the health care system itself has become more complex and frustrating, and physician-patient trust is at an all-time low. The experiences offered here are unique resource that point the way to a more humane future.

I interviewed 50 doctors using about four pages of questions developed based on the professional research literature on doctoring and my personal professional experience working with doctors. The interviews lasted between 30 minutes and two hours. I sat down with the doctor interviewees, one by one. They talked, I typed. They met with me in between patients, taking breaks to answer emails, texts, phone calls, or deal with emergencies, or after hours, on time off, during paperwork time, or while eating a rushed meal. It is also worth mentioning that some of the doctor interviewees experienced their own traumas close to the time of our interview, such as their own illness or that of someone close to them, or the death of a family member or close friend. Several of them experienced the death of their own child. Remarkably, they all kept working, each one saying that helping others helped them to cope with their own pain. After completing the interviews, I am left with an even deeper understanding of the health care crisis. It is my hope that these interviews will expose an intimate portrait of the gravity and urgency of our healthcare crisis. It is with the utmost gratitude, admiration, and humility, that I thank my doctor interviewees for their help with this task.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.