How Doctors Think

Drawing on both personal experience and extensive field research, Dr. Groopman sheds light on the faulty decision making that leads otherwise competent physicians down the wrong path in diagnosing and treating their patients. Groopman stresses the imperative for his colleagues to balance clinical formulas and data with keen insight and for patients to engage their physicians in active dialogue. Like the heroic fictional doctors in prime-time television medical dramas, Groopman advances a humane, patient-focused agenda that flies in the face of the bureaucratic, institutional establishment, but refreshingly, he manages to steer clear of pat answers and smug solutions that characterize much of the popular media's take on health care. With more than 450 titles under his belt, accomplished narrator Michael Prichard exhibits a calm, authoritative command of the material. His less-is-more approach to conveying emotion may strike some listeners as detached and lacking passion, but his steady performance fits nicely with Groopman's sensitive—but still highly inquisitive—exploration of life and death questions. Simultaneous release with the Houghton Mifflin hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 29). (June)