When Doctors Don't Listen Quotes

“Our central premise is that doctors are not listening to their patients, leading to misdiagnoses—and often, no diagnosis at all.”
― Leana Wen, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests

“We advocate for a transformation in medicine by returning to the fundamental partnership between physician and patient. We teach you that working toward a diagnosis is the one simple concept that will revolutionize your healthcare. The”
― Leana Wen, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests

“Each patient’s story should be considered on its own terms before deciding how to proceed. That’s also just common sense.”
― Leana Wen, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests

“There was one part of my job, though, that was unsettling. As I proceeded in my training, I began to see that many patients I encountered were being steered onto set diagnostic pathways. Our teachers did it, expounding on “algorithms,” which were basically recipes that lumped patients into groups with similar symptoms. Our peers did it, noting how much faster it was to see patients not as Mrs. Smith, the chatty mother of four, or Father Cogliano, the Italian priest, but as their “chief complaints” of headache and abdominal pain.”
― Leana Wen, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests

“Doctors end up adopting the role of automaton, following recipes and doing as directed, but no longer empowered to listen, to think, to diagnose, and to heal. Patients end up believing that their role is to help speed the checkbox ticking as quietly and as obediently as possible. Worse still, they begin to internalize that this is the best and only way to receive medical care.”
― Leana Wen, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests

“It used to be that people went to their doctor to find out what was wrong. That was the expectation when someone made an appointment with their local family doctor: they wanted to know what they had and how they could feel better. Ear infection: what should I take? Pulled muscle: what should I do? Broken ankle: how can you fix it? Over the years, something happened to this common sense approach. “Algorithms” and “pathways” have proliferated in ways that have reduced each person’s unique story to simplistic recipes. More often than not, this cookbook approach ends up telling patients what they don’t have—which, while potentially reassuring, does not result in a real diagnosis.1”
― Leana Wen, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests