Samyukta Mullangi, Senior Medical Director at Thyme Care and Medical Oncologist at Tennessee Oncology, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Recently, and rather coincidentally, I read ‘All in Her Head’ by Elizabeth Comen and ‘Blind Spots’ by Marty Makary. Both seem to be a recount of how much modern medicine has missed over the years, even when propelled by the best scientific ethos and spirit.
A few takeaways for me:
- Scientific ethos isn’t enough when the priors are wrong. Wrong assumptions such as ‘women are hysterical’ or that ‘early detection always saves lives’ can easily harden into dogma
- Cognitive bias can be a stronger force than scientific reasoning. Clinicians, though trained to be rational, are still human, and can be subject to anchoring, confirmation bias, availability bias, and sunk cost, just like others.
- Systems and incentives shape what medicine ‘sees’. EHRs, workflow constraints, fear of malpractice, payment models – can all prop up status quo thinking.
- Medicine changes slowly – until it changes all at once. Marty’s recounting of how HPylori was not accepted as the reason for stomach ulcers, the prolonged use of catheterization in stable angina, etc
- Support the concept of tipping points in medicine.
- Listening to patients is a scientific tool, not a ‘soft skill’. A core theme of both books is about how patient-experienced reality (pain in women and black patients, endometriosis etc) were discounted.
These critiques are not indictments of the profession, but rather a reminder that medicine must balance humility with decisiveness.
Would love for folks to recommend more books to me! I am so curious how the rise of AI clinical decision support tools will impact the speed with which medicine interrogates itself and iterates with the newest evidence at hand.”
More posts featuring Samyukta Mullangi.