Wednesday October 26, 7:30 pm: The New Yorker’s Dr. Jerome Groopman & Dr. Pamela Hartzband with Dr. David Feinberg: On Making the Best Medical Decisions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make a reservation, please e-mail your request to 

Tickets are $20 each.

For years, we have read Jerome Groopman’s Medical Dispatch and Annals of Medicine in The New Yorker. He has shared stories about how he, as a Harvard oncologist, thinks as a doctor when diagnosing a patient. Dr. Groopman studies an issue of public relevance, and in his careful parsing and almost Talmudic discussion, leads us through the complex process of how medical professionals arrive at a medical conclusion. In Your Medical Mind, Dr. Groopman and his physician wife, Dr. Pamela Hartzband, turn the tables a bit, and have written a book that guides patients to arrive at medical decisions that make sense for them.

Your Medical Mind: How To Decide What Is Right For You, is an extraordinary book, because it takes a subject so enormous and makes it deeply personal—for the reader as well as for the authors. How to find “the best” doctor means different things to different patients: would the “best” doctor be a famous specialist? Or someone with a similar style and outlook as the patient? How to assess which treatment is right for you is a deeply individual decision. Sometimes, too many treatment options make it difficult for patients to figure out the best course of treatment. Sometimes physicians and patients have different expectations and different ideas about the course of treatment, and the authors talk about the urgent need to listen—doctors to their patients, and patients to their doctors. Groopman and Hartzband look at the thorny issue of the numbers game—where do statistics help and where do they not, in deciding on a treatment plan? How can a treatment protocol be modified to be less rigid, and more accommodating to the individual patient? Diseases don’t often listen to reason, and the options can become pretty terrifying—to the patient, to family members (or surrogate decision makers), and even to the doctors as they act in the “best legitimate interests” of the patients. Groopman and Hartzband use patients’ stories to illustrate their ideas about making medical decisions. All of us, after all, or members of our families, could be the patients in this book.

If there’s any medical professional who knows how to deal with the patient as an individual, it’s Dr. David Feinberg. Dr. Feinberg is the Associate chancellor and CEO of UCLA Hospitals, and is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is noted for his commitment to patient care and patient safety, and under his supervision, UCLA hospitals have achieved spectacular patient satisfaction ratings as well as national rankings in the top 5 hospitals in the country. Dr. Feinberg’s philosophy in running UCLA hospitals is that groundbreaking medicine goes hand in hand with a simple premise: patients require personal care and that patients come first. It pays off: not only patients, but the bottom line at UCLA hospitals, reflect that this approach works.

At the newly renovated and completely redesigned Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills located at:

300 N. Clark Drive, Beverly Hills. It is located between Doheny and Robertson, immediately south of Burton Way, and three blocks NORTH of Wilshire Blvd. It is a gorgeous space and we hope you’ll join us.

To make a reservation, please e-mail your request to reservations@writersblocpresents.com. Tickets are $20 each (cash or check only at will call).

Your reservations are confirmed via email. If you are unable to attend for any reason, please notify us. Thank you.