How Doctors Think by Jerome E. Groopman (2007, Hardcover)

I picked up this book hoping for insight as a patient on how doctors think, but instead found a book that is written for someone with great medical experience. Even as a retired nurse I still had to look up unfamiliar medical terms/diagnosis/tests/thought process like heuristics*, when a simple sentence added to the paragraph would have easily made sense of the terms for a layperson. Dr Groopman is very fond of his excellent vocabulary and even I had to look up some of the "big" words and I consistently score excellent in the Reader's Digest Vocabulary Tests. Even the last chapter, which was more along the lines I thought the book would be is difficult to understand unless you had read the entire book. While I was able to grasp his reasoning someone without a medical background would probably have a hard time understanding key parts of the book. If you have a medical background or have been a patient with considerable medical problems this book is great in giving you insight into why doctors make the diagnosis they make and how they come to that conclusion. Some really great medical cases were discussed and I found this to be the highlight of the book. If you are a lay person, plan on spending a lot of time on the Internet or with a dictionary and medical dictionary close at hand. I give the book an average for the "big words" and "medical terminology" that could have been corrected by using terms a layperson could understand and by adding a little information to go along with the medical terms, after all do you know what an aortic tear is and where your aorta is located? A glossary at the end of the book accompanied by a few simple illustrations of the body would cause me to rate this book as Super-excellent!!!

*You didn't think I'd leave you hanging on heuristics did you? It means short-cuts.