WebMD Gets an “A” for Swine Flu Guide and a “C” for Guide to Never Feeling Tired Again

WebMD.com is often listed as the most popular health Web site. I find their design is too busy and their content varies considerably in quality. Every time I look at WebMD for a specific purpose, I am distracted by the ads, such as a video advertisement playing next to the text I am reading – how distracting is that? Sometimes I am there for a specific purpose and find myself clicking on the slide show or provocatively-titled articles – did someone say stickiness?

Some of their content deserves an “A”. In an analysis, their Swine Flu Guide was superior to the CDC’s and other sites at providing answers to the questions likely to be on healthcare consumer’s minds.

Other content is less impressive. The most recent article that I read when I was at WebMD for a different purpose was the irresistibly-titled guide to never feeling tired again. I was surprised that the guide, subtitled “22 ways to tackle life’s biggest energy zappers”, was from Redbook Magazine since I thought WebMD wrote their own content. The first page of the four-page article was about how to “Energize Your Diet”. It recommended that I eat breakfast to feel perkier, stay hydrated, etc. While I questioned is I wanted to feel perkier, most of the advice seemed reasonable.

I had just finished teaching a course and asked one my students, Alicia Romano, a master’s candidate in the Friedman Nutrition School at Tufts University School of Medicine and a Dietetic Intern at the Frances Stern Nutrition Center, for her opinion on the article. She responded,

As far as the nutrition related pieces are concerned (generally the first page of the article) the information is pretty accurate in terms of increasing your energy throughout the day (keeping your blood sugars stable and staying hydrated).  I haven’t read much related to the omega-3’s and increasing your energy, so that was interesting.  As far as the other information was concerned, it sounded a little “fluffy” to me, to be honest.  I think all of the tips are good, but overall, I think getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, exercising, and eating healthy and frequently throughout the day are the major keys to energy.  I was not too happy to see that they reviewed some of the new “products” at the end.  I have never even heard of half of those, and I’m sure most readers haven’t either.  If anything they are going to be informing readers of these products that they shouldn’t even try.  Their reviews weren’t on the efficacy either, just a simple quotation. I think the title is a little deceiving as well, but then again, it is from a magazine (Redbook).  I was actually surprised to see they would post a magazine article on WebMD (Personal correspondence, A.R, August 11, 2009).

I appreciate Alicia’s assessment and, based on her analysis and mine, I give the article a “C”. Some good suggestions but only a few references, no links, an introduction with only the merest hint of the content, and no conclusions or resources for further exploration. While WebMD provides many mechanisms to share an article, there are none to comment on or rate the accuracy or usefulness of an article so neither Alicia or I could post our feedback. I looked for the original Redbook article and found that while it seemed essentially the same, although split onto more pages, the links to useful sites such as the American Dietetic Association (ADA) were removed in the WebMD version. Can I lower the “C” to a “C-”?

Empathy Without Communication Is Mind Reading

Pam Ressler, RN, BSN, HN-BC, and I discussed how healthcare professionals, family, and friends use empathy vs. sympathy to respond to someone who is ill when I told her about my blog post. Pam had insights based on both professional and personal experiences. She told me about Empathy vs. Emotional Reasoning in Nursing, in Advance for Nurses, which Pam posted a blog entry about. The article defines empathy and emotional reasoning as:

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand another person’s circumstances, point of view, thoughts and feelings. When experiencing empathy, one should be able to understand someone else’s internal experiences.

Emotional reasoning is defined as ‘a cognitive error whereby a person who is nervous or anxious resorts to emotional reactions to determine a course of action.’

The article advises “empathy without communication is mind reading. Listen to patients; provide education, but don’t give advice.”

Pam also mentioned a study about doctors and empathic communication that “sheds light on the types of situations and remarks that physicians should recognize as opportunities to express understanding and support… empathic responses can be brief and do not make consultations longer.”

Finding Useful H1N1 Information Online

I was interviewed for Healthcare IT News about how H1N1 information is disseminated to the public. While the news media was providing constant updates about outbreaks, my interest was in how healthcare consumers get useful information. I sent the author, Molly Merrill, a quick analysis of some of the sources of information I had used.

The CDC is known and established as the most respected source of information in this country and comes up as one of the first results in most searches on “swine flu” or “H1N1″. Their site is well-branded and is clearly marked with the last updates. However the site itself is busy with sidebars and lots of related information, while arguably the most important information for most healthcare consumers is in a box near the bottom, “What You Can Do to Stay Healthy”. What is likely to be prevalent on most people’s minds doesn’t appear at all here. If you click on “H1N1 Flu & You” near the bottom, a Q&A format addresses the questions people are likely to have, such as “What are the signs and symptoms of this virus in people?” In addition, the CDC has done a great job of using social media, such as twitter, for updates.
 
While I applaud the Massachusetts Department of Public Healthfor providing material in 14 languages, the page itself is basically a collection of links to PDFs. The documents I read are are well-written but some are not even what the links say; for instance, under “Resources if You Are Sick or Think You Are Sick”, the Flu Symptoms Checklist was designed for a parent to determine if a child should be kept home from school or brought to the doctor.
 
WebMD’s Swine Flu Centerdoes a better job of providing immediately visible and useful information through clearly labeled links to answer common questions such as “Swine Flu and Travel”. Due to poor health literacy skills and the fears that have been played upon by the media frenzy, health Web sites should provide very specific information that addresses the concerns uppermost on a healthcare consumer’s mind and it should take minimal scrolling to find it, as is the case here. 
 
Finally, my town, Lexington, MA, has done a great job of addressing parental concerns through emails. The school department Web site provides a parent resource with guidelines about how to talk to your child, a huge problem when children hear a lot on the media and from their friends and need to hear factual age-appropriate information from their parents. And, when one of my sons was out sick for a few days, I received a phone call from the school nurse!

The Doctor as the Second Opinion and the Internet as the First

In “The Doctor as the Second Opinion and the Internet as the First,” I describe the increasing common phenomenon of people using the Internet before seeing their doctor:

People who use the Internet for health information often obtain their first opinion that way, and then, if they go to a doctor, the doctor’s advice is relegated to the second opinion. Using the Internet, or Dr. Google, as a first opinion can be problematic due to misinformation, misinterpretation of valid information, and the fears that can arise due to lack of medical knowledge, inexperience, and limited perspectives. When patients do visit their doctor for a second opinion, some do not disclose the fact they already received their first opinion and often their doctors do not ask. The result is that patients may suffer needlessly if their fears, concerns, misunderstandings, and misinterpretations are not addressed by the healthcare providers with the expertise and skills to assist them. A pernicious disconnect exists between many patients who use the Internet for health information and the medical professionals who care for them. The medical profession can alleviate this disconnect by taking the lead in establishing guidelines for systematically talking to patients about, and guiding, their Internet research. Human-computer interaction professionals can collaborate with the medical community in ensuring credible health Web sites become the gold standard that patients use to achieve better health.

I appreciate any feedback, insights, or experiences.

Cereal and the Internet or Can’t I Eat My Breakfast without Going Online?

The four breakfast cereal boxes sitting on my kitchen counter all have urls to promote healthy eating. Not having noticed that before, I checked if all food packing has urls now, and discovered that many do, but they are primarily, in my small sampling, to enter contests, get recipes, or go to the corporate website. While some of the cereal packages similarly have urls for recipes and the like as well, what I was interested in was the healthy eating information.

Starting with my personal favorite, the Quaker Oats oatmeal package told me that it is one of the “over 250 smart choices made easy from Pepsi Co.” at smartspot.com. There I learned about “energy balance”, why eating breakfast is healthy, and found a link to The Breakfast Research Institute, which is sponsored by Quaker and Tropicana. There, the Breakfast Calculator told me that my breakfast of choice, while higher in calories than a doughnut and cup of coffee, is also significantly more nutritious and brings me closer to meeting my daily recommended nutrition requirements. I could compare my breakfast to their pre-set breakfasts and even tweak mine to increase the nutritional value. And, for my breakfast entertainment, there were podcasts!

After that, I barely wanted to check the other sites out but did out of curiosity. Corn Chex had wholegrainnation.com, where I took a multiple choice quiz about whole grains. Honey Nut Cheerios offered eatbetteramerica.com (which wholegrainnation.com is part of), where I found lots of recipes, a discussion forum, a blog, and more. The blog entries I read all linked to “healthified” recipes in which some ingredients are replaced with alternatives so the result is “as yummy” but “better-for-you”. Finally, Raisin Bran has kelloggsnutrition.com, where “master-moms” taught me how to “snacktivate”.

If I was creating a website that a cereal box led to, based on my perusal of these sites, I would:

• think of common misspellings for my url and buy the domains – typing in kelloggnutrition.com with one “g”, as I first did, should still lead to the right website
• make sure that my discussion forums were not stale (no pun intended) – topics from over a month ago would not be tagged as new
• determine if there is a pedagogical or branding advantage to coining my own terms, such as “healthified” and “snacktivate”
• use the simplicity of cereal – it is generally eaten for breakfast in a bowl with milk – as a guiding principle rather than developing a complex or overwhelming site
• most of all, I would promote healthy eating for breakfast through advice that could be immediately used

The sites I looked at collectively offered advice on all aspects of diet and fitness, not just breakfast, through articles, tests, tools, forums, podcasts, and ask the expert, oriented primarily to parents but with sections for professionals, educators, and children. But what is the likelihood that someone will peruse this abundance of  information and implement significant lifestyle changes before rushing off to school or work?

Ultimately, I preferred the Breakfast Research Institute. It just focused on breakfast. It was the only site that provided me with immediately useful and actionable advice: that adding a piece of fruit to my current breakfast of oatmeal would give me a healthier start to my day. And it confirmed what I already knew, although affirmation is always beneficial: that my current breakfast is far superior nutritionally to coffee and a doughnut.

How Much Chocolate Should Anyone Eat and How Much Should Anyone Rely on Health Forum Advice

I love chocolate but have never considered that the amount I eat is unhealthy. In fact, how common is it to eat chocolate – or any other food – to the point of being worried? In the case of white_sakura (someone’s user id), she (I believe the people posting here are female) said in a forum, “I was wondering if it is too much to have about 30% of my calorie allowance to go toward chocolate.” The forum, part of calorie-count, from About.com Health, is a site for people who are concerned about weight loss and nutrition.

In response to her post, w_s, as someone nicknamed her, received 6 responses in 2 days and also provided clarification a few times. It was quite a lively discussion compared to some forums, where questions go permanently unanswered. In the ensuing discussion, one person told w_s what seemed like practical advice to me: “30% would be too much. Chocolate, although lovely, is just sugar and fat… the real downside is that you’d be trying to get all your nutrition from the remaining 70% of your diet.” Another agreed, “30% is waayyyy too high.” Someone else differed in her view, “If it fits in your cals and you feel good, go for it!”

Other advice was to try savoring her chocolate – which w_s was already doing, taking an hour to eat 2 squares. Wow, she must not have a busy schedule. I suppose you could savor the taste of chocolate for hours as long as you don’t work in a call center where you have to answer the phone and talk to people. Or any other occupation where you have to talk to people. Or touch anything. That doesn’t leave many jobs.

A side discussion had to do with the reported health benefits of dark chocolate, including a link to an article in WebMD, which reports on a study and concludes that a balanced diet and exercise is the key to a healthy heart. The same person wrote about her own daily chocolate consumption, which “keeps me from overindulging in some other not-so-good-for-me things”. Did she mean licorice, Pringles, or more serious vices?

Many people are more comfortable seeking peer advice online, often more open anonymously than they would be with their doctor – or a close friend. (Actually, that made me wonder if w_s has a spouse or roommate, and, if so, does she eat in front of him or her?) It’s also heartwarming that people respond, and most empathically. No one called w_s obsessive or addicted or recommended that she take a leap into Willy Wonka’s river of chocolate. However, only two responses seemed medically sound, those saying that 30% is too high. No one suggested making an appointment with a doctor or nutritionist or following a plan for a nutritionally-balanced diet.

There was only one mention of a specific product in a response, a type of Lindt chocolate. After reading that I noticed that the banner ad was for car insurance and the sidebar ad was for flights to London – now Switzerland I could understand! More relevant to the discussion topic, the banner at the bottom was a meter for diabetics. That ad crystallized the issue for me: poor nutrition can have severe consequences. My advice to w_s: getting anonymous online advice is great but this is a case where professional medical advice could add healthy years to your life.

Optimal Use of a Scale for Weight Loss

I perused a weight loss site, The DailyPlate, curious how they support people who are trying to lose weight. The site’s raison d’être seems to be tracking of calories consumed and burned. I checked out swing dancing, my favorite activity, only to find that of the seemingly countless types of dancing, swing burns 296 calories an hour for an average 145-pound person, over twice what accordion-playing burns. On the advertiser-supported site, Lance Armstrong lets me know what to do if I’m “tired of being tired”.

Since I found the effort of calculating calories burnt overwhelming with so many choices – how many calories did I burn searching for my activities? – I looked at the forums. I came across the very practical question of when is the best time of day to weigh oneself. It’s a fascinating question because it is so practical yet complex, as evidenced by the varied responses which depicted the emotional impact of weight loss or gain. The posts contained humor, mostly about doctors, euphemisms, and advice from personal experience or from the writer’s doctor or nutritionist.

I liked how supportive people were, in much the same way I’ve seen in other health forums. The responses showed the incredible range of opinions on how to use a scale as part of weight loss and, futhermore, the extent to which devices come with instructions for set up and maintenance but not for use. My scale is the most complex one I’ve ever owned, and, while I can change the battery, I do not avail myself of all of its features (feature creep is a growing problem in previously simple devices, including the toothbrush and the scale). But, like my lesson in videoconferencing, where I learned how to connect sites around the world without any advice about how to engage students, sometimes devices need instructions for optimal use. Should the AMA weigh in?

Why Ted Kennedy Isn’t Obsessively Searching the Internet

Sen. Ted Kennedy was diagnosed this week with a malignant tumor. I bet he is not online looking for answers right now. Why? Because the answers have been provided by some of the world’s experts. In fact, they are there for everyone to read in the Boston Globe and other newspapers, complete with graphics.

Some say health is the great equalizer. (Others call education, the internet, – you name it – the great equalizer.) Many studies have examined health disparities and looked at the impact of health insurance, ethnicity, gender, and other factors on the quality of health and health care.

Health disparities aside, anyone can become ill. Everyone’s hearts go out to Sen. Kennedy and his family at his diagnosis. But many people, given a devastating diagnosis – or even a minor one – turn to the internet for help.

Before the internet, people relied primarily on their doctors. Now they rely on their doctors and the internet. But do people use the internet because they want to or because they have to?

Most people do not have world-renowned experts chiming in on the best course of treatment. Even the graphics – I can only remember one time that a doctor drew a sketch for me.

My friend Maureen emailed me:

I certainly have used the internet for health information. Usually what I find scares the daylights out of me! Or it’s too general and simplistic- until I find the right sites. Since I’m such a worrier I always need to be careful in that regard because it can be addictive- just one more search!

Maureen, a physician’s daughter, uses the internet for herself and her family, as do many others, obsessively searching for answers. People like Maureen and me use the internet because we are not rich or famous enough to have teams of experts to treat us. Ultimately, no one wants to be ill and, if they are, they want the best expertise available.

The Impact of the Democratization of Health Information on Elders

Hongtu Chen and I, with some inspiration from Larry Prusack, just finished a journal paper on The Impact of the Democratization of Health Information on Elders. Here is the abstract:

Thanks to the Internet, elders have access to an unprecedented amount of health information about diseases and medications.  Much of this is information previously only available to medical professionals. The ease of locating – or the democratization of – health information has benefits and drawbacks. The benefits to elders are the ability to learn about all aspects of health whenever they choose. The drawbacks are that, due to lack of medical training and poor health literacy, they may not be able to effectively discern the quality of, comprehend, and use what they find online, and, worse, may rely on what they find online instead of seeking professional medical care.

Eliot Spitzer Would Be Better Off If He Practiced What He Preached

Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, is embroiled in a scandal and announced that he “failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself”. His alleged actions are more notable because of his anti-corruption stance. (I also heard that governor was his stepping stone to the White House, which may never happen now.)

Not ever wanting to be accused of not practicing what I preach, I went to my list of Ten Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes To Be a More Successful e-learning Professional and did #8, to contact an e-learning expert. Actually, it was my own spin on #8, but creativity and designing for our target audience are part of our profession!

Here’s what I did: I emailed Don Norman, who is an expert at many things, including e-learning, and is one of the people I most admire. I will add a caveat here that I know him and have asked him for advice before so I felt hopeful that he would respond. Don gave me brief feedback on the issue I asked him about, promising more since he was preparing for a trip, and detailed feedback on my blog, in particular, on my recent post on The Disconnect Between Patients and Doctors. As a result of this, I am writing a new post since I agree with his points.

Hence I have practiced what I preach and am better off for it since the insights I received will make me more successful. I bet Governor Spitzer wishes he had listened to his own advice.

Using MySpace for Health Information: Where is the Empathy?

MySpace has over 300 million accounts as of 2/3/08 and was the #1 website in the US at least one week in 2006. If someone is a regular user of MySpace and has a health question, it is easy to turn to one’s community for help. MySpace Forums have a Health and Fitness section with exercise, general, and nutrition forums. The most active discussion under Nutrition is a thread on diets started 6/9/05 and it includes a post from someone who offer 59 ways to eat less of which many are potentially extremely dangerous. The 1300 replies range from serious posts about anorexia to advertisements. The other forums are similar, with a mix of serious, frivolous, and seemingly harmful discussions about bodybuilding, natural remedies, steroids, etc. There is a broader mix of comments than in most health forums and the amount that are off topic or what I perceive as far from helpful is far greater than in other forums I have looked at. Most other health forums tend toward highly supportive comments or advice. Are there different social norms in MySpace that lead to less empathic behavior?

The Disconnect Between Patients and Doctors

In yesterday’s talk, Patient, Heal Thyself: How to Succeed with Online Consumer Health Sites, I started off by asking if I should lose 10 lbs. on the Atkins diet or by joining Weight Watchers. Melanie Zibit answered that I would lose the weight more slowly with Weight Watchers but would be more likely to keep it off. Most people agreed that this was good advice (the wisdom of crowds). I then asked if knowing anything about the weight loss experience or medical credentials of the advice-giver would have an impact, which people agreed with. Using sites like Amazon.com, a book-purchasing decision can be made based on the wisdom of crowds (ranking and ratings), expert opinions (from professional reviewers or well-known people in the field), or other readers (whose reviews are themselves rated). But a poor book choice has few ramifications, while health decisions can have severe consequences.

Many people get weight loss or any other type of health advice from strangers or friends, often knowing little about their experience or credentials; from books or magazines (every celebrity seems to have a weight loss secret or problem, based on a perusal at the supermarket check-out); from ads in magazines or television; or even from spam (I get frequent offer for weight loss drugs without a doctor’s prescription). People also learn about weight loss online – 49% of U.S. internet users search for diet or nutrition advice and 80% search for health advice. A search for “weight loss” returned 75,000,000 results, with “diet” and “fat” getting even more, and “weight” returning 1/2 billion results! Weight loss is certainly a common concern, but searches on other health topics also yield millions of results.

The results range from the Mayo Clinic to herbal remedies “As Seen on Oprah”. Most health seekers gather “health advice online without consistently examining the quality indicators of the information they find“. Information and health literacy impact the search results people select and the sites they use. Poor information literacy skills impact people’s ability to discern the quality of information. Poor health literacy skills – the lack of understanding about health coupled with the emotional burden of health concerns – make it far too easy for people to desire and seek magical cures or easy solutions. There are few reliable indications of quality; the only “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” in health is HONcode.

Sites vary in their usefulness, accuracy, branding, presence of advertising, and amount of interactivity, to name a few attributes. The most heavily used sites are WebMD.com and RevolutionHealth.com, both covering all diseases and conditions. Other sites are more specialized, such as Leroy Sievers’ heavily commented cancer blog at NPR.org, the very focused discussions on the Road Back Foundation bulletin board, and the well-segmented and very active community message boards at Weightwatchers.com. There are millions more examples, well-designed and dreadful, heavily used and ghost towns, frequently updated and unchanged in 10 years.

With consumer-directed care, patients are being asked to play a greater role in their health care. Providers are putting considerable effort into Electronic Health Records, Pay-for-Performance – countless initiatives to improve quality, reduce errors, and cut costs. But when a someone lies in bed at night worrying about their own health or that of a loved ones, EHR privacy is unlikely to be what is on their mind. Turning to the internet is easy with the constant availability – no need for an appointment or co-pay.

Consumer health sites have a significant impact on the quality of life of their users who turn to them before – or instead of – seeking medical help. Many doctors don’t know what their patients are doing online, and many dread the patient who arrives at an appointment armed with search results. “There’s so much information (as well as misinformation) in medicine — and, yes, a lot of it can be Googled — that one major responsibility of an expert is to know what to ignore,” but patients often lack that expertise.

That is where the disconnect lies between patients and doctors: that the time spent online is invisible to or an annoyance to a doctor but is a lifeline for many patients. Doctors need to understand and learn from their patient’s information seeking behaviors. And there is a lot to learn since what patients communicate online is a very different lens on their concerns and needs than what a doctor hears during a consultation, which is a small snapshot of how the patient is feeling, provided in a location much less comfortable than the patient’s home. And doctors need to “prescribe” sites with reliable and useful information, and online health communities where peer support is available.

Technology is not the answer, even good design is not the answer – although both can help. So can better information and health literacy skills. The greatest impact will come from bridging the chasm between what patients are currently doing online and what takes place during the doctor-patient consultation.

Patient, Heal Thyself: How to Succeed with Online Consumer Health Sites

I spoke today at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council Healthcare Lunch & Learn Series on Patient, Heal Thyself: How to Succeed with Online Consumer Health Sites. My co-presenters were John Lester (also known as Pathfinder Linden) who left Second Life for Waltham and Amir Lewkowicz, co-founder and Vice President for Partnerships at Inspire. I will post my notes shortly but until then, here is the abstract:

With consumer-directed care, patients are being asked to play a greater role in their health care. Moreover, those with chronic diseases often get better counsel from other sufferers than they do from physicians. This talk will cover the most effective ways to design and evaluate online health communities.

Changes in the health care system and the pervasiveness of the Internet have led to an increased use of the Internet by health care consumers. 80% of people in the US who use the Internet are using it for health searches.

Health web sites and online health communities provide a means for patients and their families to learn about an illness and seek support. The importance of online consumer health is evidenced by the popularity of sites such as WebMD and RevolutionHealth. Consumer health sites have a significant impact on the quality of life of their users who turn to them before seeking medical help.

Health web sites and online health communities raise difficult design challenges. These challenges include wide variability of participant’s medical expertise, health literacy, and technology literacy. A major risk is the potential consequences when poor advice is taken or when professional treatment is not sought.

By participating in this interactive discussion you will learn:

1) How online communities benefit consumers and businesses
2) How the nature of the disease or illness impacts site design
3) How innovative Web 2.0 technologies can enhance participation
4) What is necessary to start and sustain successful sites

If people don’t listen to their doctors, who do they listen to?

A WSJ Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll found that a majority of U.S. adults believe that medical providers over-treat or under-treat their medical conditions. While sometimes this leads to getting a second opinion, other times it leads to not filling a prescription or getting a diagnostic test. The Kaiser Women’s Health Survey found that 22% of women “expressed concerns about the quality of care they got from their physicians or health care providers, compared to 17% of men. This issue was a particular problem for women in fair or poor health (40%).” The nurse practitioner in my doctor’s office once told me that more people take the advice of a stranger in the supermarket check-out line than her advice. There are many efforts to increase the number of people with health insurance, but the availability of affordable professional expertise does not necessarily mean that advice is taken.

I gave a keynote address on Online Communities: Innovative Notions of Expertise and Peer Learning, and started my talk by asking if I should use Weight Watchers or Atkins to lose 10 pounds. Saul Carliner, who was prepared to be a plant in the audience if no one else answered immediately, gave a compelling argument for the long term benefits of Weight Watchers. I then asked who agreed with him, and almost everyone did. One of the few people who hadn’t raised her hand said that diet and exercise need to be tightly coupled, but we agreed that she was only enhancing Saul’s response. I pointed out that we had (1) an opinion from one (somewhat anonymous) person and (2) the wisdom of crowds agreeing with him. I then asked how Saul’s advice would be looked at if (3) we knew that he had successfully lost and kept off weight or (4) we knew that he had a professional experience as a nutritionist. I went on to give a corresponding example on Amazon.com of how book reviews can fit into these categories. However, making a book selection has little cost, while health choices can have enormous consequences.

In What Doctors Don’t Know (Almost Everything), Kevin Paterson writes, “From the first day in the cadaver room and on, every medical student is drilled with this truism: ‘Medicine is both an art and a science.’” He goes on to write that “intuition is certainly an indispensable part of medicine. The body is so complex, and the ways it might go wrong so varied, that in the middle of the night, standing next to some fresh catastrophe, a doctor sometimes needs to generalize and to reduce very complicated problems to first principles. It is simply not possible to be rigorously intellectual and consult the available medical data about every single thing, all the time.”

Even if doctors don’t know everything, they know a lot. But if people don’t listen to their doctors, who do they listen to and are they receiving sound advice?