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How can we cope with uncertainty?

by | Aug 9, 2016

We’ve written often about uncertainty, which is a recurring challenge in medicine and especially in participatory medicine, where issues of relationship and decisions are core. Some doctors have told me they were trained to display certainty even when things...

Zack Berger from #MedX on uncertainty and decision aids

by | Sep 7, 2014

Regular readers may recall SPM member Zack Berger MD PhD’s July post here The pledge of the patient-centered physician. Zack is one of the many SPM members attending the Stanford Medicine X conference this weekend and sends this Saturday night report,...

Action in the face of uncertainty

by | Nov 2, 2011

Science seeks certainty. The problem in medicine is, the body is complex and our knowledge is incomplete. People who want certainty – physicians or patients – are kidding themselves. And if we expect docs to be perfect, it’s a setup for dysfunction....
Building for Success: How Good Clinicians Can Empower Patients

Building for Success: How Good Clinicians Can Empower Patients

by | Jul 12, 2023

Editor’s note: Ibrahim Rashid contracted Long COVID more than two years ago. The experience is propelling his patient advocacy and entrepreneurship, as co-founder of the digital health company Strong Haulers. In this excerpt from his new book, Strong Hauler: Learning...
Whither Cochrane, for e-patients and everyone else?

Whither Cochrane, for e-patients and everyone else?

by | Oct 20, 2018

This will be the third, and last, in my short series on attending the Cochrane Colloquium in Edinburgh in September of this year. In the first post, I talked about what that conference was like; in the second, I shared an overview of Cochrane as a global movement to...
Learning More from ‘Less is More’ Medicine

Learning More from ‘Less is More’ Medicine

by | Sep 13, 2017

(part three of three) Lessons from Quebec for Choosing Wisely and Less is More Medicine After a busy few days tracking topics around the researchers and policy-makers at a recent “Preventing Overdiagnosis” conference in Quebec aimed at reducing...
Allie Davanzo: The Power of Art in Medicine

Allie Davanzo: The Power of Art in Medicine

by | May 16, 2017

This is a guest blog post by Allie Davanzo. Allie was my student in the New Media and Health Communication class I taught at TCNJ. More about the class is shared in this post.  Allie Davanzo is a sophomore Public Health major at The College of New Jersey who hopes to...

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