Join Saul and Alan at Buzz Cafe in Oak Park for a discussion and signing of Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care. The event will take place from 6:30 – 8:30pm on March 2, 2016. Buzz Cafe is located at 905 S. Lombard Ave, Oak Park, IL, and offers a full dinner menu as well as coffee and desserts.

More thoughts on the importance of direct observation of care, at the Oxford University Press blog:

http://blog.oup.com/2016/02/undercover-observation-health-care/

From Saul Weiner, via the Diane Rehm Show blog, on doctor burnout and how engagement with patients prevents it:

http://thedianerehmshow.org/2016/02/16/fighting-burnout-in-medicine

Alan and Saul discuss how their undercover recordings of doctors and patients reveal the mistakes doctors make when they don’t know their patients’ life contexts, and what to do about them, with Larry Rifkin on “Talk of the Town” on WATR AM 1320 radio in Waterbury, Connecticut.

Find the show at http://www.rifkinradio.com/?p=495

Saul participated in a panel on the Diane Rehm Show focused on Improving Doctor-Patient Communication in a Digital World.

Listen at http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio/#/shows/2016-02-09/improving-doctor-patient-communication-in-a-digital-world/111878/@00:00.

We spent the morning of February 2 live on the air with Geoffrey Riley and Emily Cureton on The Jefferson Exchange on Jefferson Public Radio in Oregon, discussing the book, contextualizing care, and unannounced standardized patients.

You can listen at http://cpa.ds.npr.org/ksor/audio/2016/02/The_Jefferson_Exchange_02_03_2016_Hr2_0.mp3 or use the embedded player here:

There wasn’t time for us to address one of the points brought up by listener Connie, about doctors “locking in” to diagnoses. In the decision making world, we call that “premature closure”, and it’s a reflection of the general human propensity that it’s easy to come to a (first) conclusion than to change your mind. As we discuss in the book, doctors are taught to develop a “differential diagnosis” – a list of additional possible medical explanations for the symptoms – as a way to keep them from focusing solely on what they first believe is most likely; we have written about the additional value of developing a “contextual differential diagnosis” – a list of possible contextual factors that could also be contributing to the patient’s problem.