Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty [Paperback]

Harold Bursztajn (Author), Richard Feinbloom (Contributor), Robert Hamm (Contributor), Archie Brodsky (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2001

Considered ahead of its time since the first publication in 1981, Medical Choices, Medical Chances provides a telescope for viewing how developments in the fields of medical research, medical technology, and health care organization are likely to influence the doctor-patient relationship in the 21st Century. The book explores this intricate web of relationships among doctors, patients, and families and offers a new framework for mastering the emotional and intellectual challenges of uncertainty, while at the same time providing tools for all concerned to regain control from managed care. It is a must-read for all those interested in medicine and where it is headed in the new millennium.

Hilary Putnam is Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic at Harvard University. He is termed by Wikipedia to be: " a key figure in the philosophy of mind during the 20th century."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Bursztajn is co-director of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, cares for patients as a primary care physician and psychoanalytically informed psychiatrist and consults as a forensic psychiatrist nationally.

Richard I. Feinbloom, M.D. is a family practitioner with the Permanente Medical Group of Northern California. His most recent book is Pregnancy, Birth, and The Early Months. The Thinking Woman's Guide.

Robert M. Hamm, Ph.D., is a cognitive psychologist specializing in judgment and decision making in medicine. He works training family physicians in the medical school at the University of Oklahoma.

Archie Brodsky, a Research Associate at Harvard Medical School and Brandeis University, is coauthor of numerous books in psychology and health care.

Product Details

• Paperback: 495 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (February 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595165176
• ISBN-13: 978-0595165179
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,626,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Medical truth and consequences often ignored, April 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty (Paperback)

Why or why not submit to (techincal) battery in the name of better health? Because intervention always works? Because we patients deeply want to believe intervention will help? Because providers want us to believe it will help? Because it's faster? Because it's better?

This book lays out the pieces of medical choice-making in the context of the probabilities that underlie all desision making. It suggests that principled gambling is seminal to medical choices and makes suggestions, via numerous clinical vignettes, of how medical practice needs to change so that patients and practitioners can make better choices rather than those based on blind faith, short-term clinical efficiency, and shamanistic egos.

In short, this book deconstructs the mechanistic (know-it-all) paradigm of medical practice and replaces it with a probabilistic (don't know it all) paradigm that would, in most cases, be fairer and kinder to all.

Medicine would be a better place if the suggestions in this book were adopted.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The book is missing pages from the index, April 13, 2006

By 

C. Elsie (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty (Paperback)

My 2-star rating only has to do with the problem that the index is missing several pages - nothing to do with the contents of the book which I very much look forward to reading. The index ends with Principia Mathematica on page 454 even though on that same page another entry says "See also Probabilistic Paradigm" - which, of course, should come after Principia Mathematica but it is not there. The problem may be broader than just the copy of the book I received because the online version of the index also ends abruptly - I only noticed this after my purchase. So, if you mind having pages of the index missing from your book, be careful with your purchase