“In nearly every medical-decision-making encounter, the physician is at the center of the discussion, with the patient the recipient of the physician’s decisions.
Dr. Robert Alan McNutt starts from a very different premise: the patient should be at the center. McNutt challenges the physician-directed, medical-expertise model of making decisions, presenting a practical approach augmented by formal exercises designed to give patients the tools and confidence to compare and contrast their health-care options so they can make their own choices.
He addresses a number of scenarios, including heart disease, breast cancer, and prostate cancer—conditions that pose a range of choices that patients may face about diagnoses and treatments”.
I am humbled and happy that my book is getting nice reviews. I wrote this book for patients and believe that it presents a way out of the present medical system’s over treatment and testing of patients. Thank you to the reviewers.
Patients must help make their own decisions. Patients should interpret the value of information. Only informed patients can assure their best chances at best care. Physicians should navigate to best information, but patients must also be able to discern the useful from the useless. The power structure of medicine must be turned 180 degrees from system to patient.
Reviews:
“An extraordinarily powerful tool for patients, but it is equally powerful for medical educators to help their students keep the patient perspective in the forefront during their learning process. 5 Stars!” –Doody’s Book Reviews
“With McNutt’s cooperative problem-solving insight, patients will feel like partners rather than pawns in the health-care system.” –Foreword Reviews
“This excellent book explains medical decisions–often life and death–in powerful but personal ways. Your Health, Your Decisions is both very engaging and necessary.” –Ross Koppel, coeditor of First, Do Less Harm: Confronting the Inconvenient Problems of Patient Safety
“With examples based in clinical trials citing recent, sound research, this book will help patients understand the major principles of decision making in a practical and clear way.” –Alan Schwartz, the Michael Reese Endowed Professor of Medical Education and Research Professor of Pediatrics, University of Illinois at Chicago.
