The Secrets of Medical Decision Making: How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of the Health Care Machine

Author
Oleg I. Reznik
Publisher
Loving Healing Press

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We are all patients at some time. Is the medical industry giving us the best treatment possible, at the best price? We all know that it isn’t. My book, The Secrets of Medical Decision Making: How to avoid becoming a victim of the Health Care Machine, shows what goes on behind the scenes of the current medical care and how it impacts the patient. I describe actual cases from my clinical practice showing the most common paths that lead to increased patient suffering. I then offer possible solutions.

My book covers all the health care settings a reader may encounter: outpatient (the most common type of health care setting encountered by patients), the inpatient (hospital), preventive (patients who are not sick but seek preventive services), and end-of-life care setting. The latter may be especially pertinent in the view of the recent public tragedy of the Terri Schiavo case.

Personal stories of the patients that I encountered make this reading easy to relate to. The experiences of patients are used as starting points to show how doctor’s decisions are affected by a variety of non-medical considerations.

I introduce a concept of a Medical Box—forces that have a stronger hold on most physicians than the heavy chains of prison shackles. Here are, what I call, the four corners of the Medical Box:

• Fear of litigation.
• Financial and time pressure.
• Guidelines of Health Care authorities.
• The current Medical Model—disease oriented thinking.

   

  The text illustrates how each of these is played out in everyday patient care. A number of practical recommendations are offered. The most important theme, overarching the entire book, is empowering prospective patients to use their own common sense and trust their own judgment in making medical decisions about their medical care.

  A foreword to the book is written by Colin P. Kopes-Kerr, MD, JD, MPH, who is a Vice Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine, and Program Director of the Family Medicine Residency Program, at University Hospital and SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine, Stony Brook, NY.

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