Susan Block, the Harvard palliative care pioneer, pointed out that in many places, communication-skills training in medicine is “primitive.” But there are successes. Recent advances in geriatric medicine and palliative care embody what can happen when the U.S. medical system shifts from high-tech intervention (which can bring its own problems) to helping patients live with their condition. Geriatric and palliative care doctors are trained to elicit patients’ own attitudes about what matters most to them. Medical schools are also trying to reform medicine’s longstanding habit of patient
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