Get Inside Your Doctor's Head

July 1, 2013
Peterson, a University of Minnesota Medical School professor and infectious disease specialist, aims to help patients (and doctors) navigate daunting health-care dilemmas with 10 deceptively simple “rules”: “If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do anything”; if what you’re doing seems to be working, continue; if it isn’t, think about doing something else; always get a second opinion about a proposed invasive procedure; your doctor can’t make you feel better if you don’t have symptoms; “never trust anyone completely”; most things are what they seem—except when they’re not; “what your doctor doesn’t know could kill you”; “timing is everything, and sometimes time is the cure”; and “caring is always important medicine.” Peterson allows that each rule is nuanced and may need to be broken occasionally (except for the last rule), and he presents both heartening and heartbreaking cases to illustrate each. It’s a small book, but it’s full of big and invaluable advice. “The authoritarian approach of ‘your doctor knows best’ is gone,” Peterson states, and while his sagest wisdom isn’t on the list, it could be a life-saver: patients need to speak up.