A recent research article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and the gap between its findings and the real world, helps point up the usefulness and limitations of research. The article, by Susan H. McDaniel, PhD, and coauthors, set out to determine how often doctors speak about their colleagues in supportive or critical ways.

Their method is one widely used in the field: simulated patients, actors, were prepared with lifelike stories about their feigned cases of advanced lung cancer complete with manufactured charts describing what previous doctors had done. The conversations they had with physicians (some oncologists, others family medicine practitioners) were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed; each statement by a physician about the care provided by other doctors was categorized as Supportive, Critical, or Neutral.

The results were not altogether surprising, but I'll let their abstract's summary speak for itself (I edited it slightly):

"Twelve of 42 comments (29 %) were Supportive, twenty-eight (67 %) as Critical, and two (4 %) as Neutral. Supportive comments attributed positive qualities to another physician or their care. Critical comments included one specialty criticizing another and general lack of trust in physicians."

As far as I can figure out, however, the article did not discuss what doctors should do in a very common circumstance: when their patients did receive treatment from another physician that they, the doctors, feel was incorrect. Last week, for example, I saw a patient who had been treated by some oncologists (they weren't from Hopkins - which doesn't mean this story couldn't have applied to them). They had given her treatment without discussing with her the risks or benefits. She came to me bewildered and frustrated.

So what should I have done in that case? Made polite noises? Reflected the patient's feelings? I did those as well. At some point, though, the patient's intuitions should be verified and the truth called out: no, it is not okay to leave the patient's wishes and preferences out of the equation, and all the more so when they are vulnerable, as cancer can make anyone.

Sure, tactfulness is key, and collegial relations with other providers can be maintained in such a circumstance, but identification of systematic missteps in care (such as leaving the patient out of a treatment discussion) is no vice. In fact, such honest talk is in the very service of professionalism.

How do you talk about your other doctors with your primary care provider?

I'm not going to discuss the entire subject of cholesterol in this post, but one part of it: specifically, how to discuss with your doctor how much cholesterol should matter to you.

If you have read any health news in the past week, you know that the American College of Cardiology and the American Health Association issued new guidelines to help doctors advise patients about cholesterol medications. The new recommendations are accompanied by a calculator of heart risk into which one enters various laboratory and personal characteristics - whether you smoke, have diabetes, have high blood pressure, and the like. Unfortunately, a kerfluffle has ensued over some errors present in the calculator. Millions of Americans, under the new guidelines, might be recommended to receive cholesterol medications - and this massive expansion of the medicated populace is under dispute.

Putting that aside, however, we will focus here on an even more basic question: how do you know what level of heart risk is important to you? Any recommendations about whether or not to use a cholesterol medication - the old ones and the new ones - depend on the application of calculation to you: the doctor will calculate the risk in the next 10 years that you will have a heart attack, and use that number to decide whether you should be taking a cholesterol medication.

However, that assumption crumbles the harder you press on it. First you should discuss with your doctor whether you are in one of the high-risk categories which places you at significant risk of heart disease in the first place: a family history of early heart disease or stroke; or a history of diabetes in yourself. Perhaps, on the other hand, you are generally healthy and your risk of heart disease is low - this is probably most people. A significant proportion will fall somewhere in the middle.

But even if your risk lies at one of these two extremes, and your doctor is confident in telling you that your risk of heart disease is high (or low), there is one essential point to keep in mind which is underemphasized in all the media coverage of the new cholesterol guidelines:

Whether to take such a medication is still, and always, your decision.

This is not "your decision" in the sense of: go play in traffic, see if I care. Rather, your decision-making must take into account a whole variety of factors, which can be clarified by thinking about the following questions, or discussing them with your doctor:

Cholesterol medications can reduce the rate of heart disease, but there's a difference between absolute rate reduction and relative rate reduction. If a cholesterol medicine reduces your rate of heart disease by 50%, that sounds great, but it's less impressive if your 10-year chance of developing heart disease was only 5% to start with. Maybe you can live with a 10-year chance of developing heart disease that's 5 in 100. So you might ask: "What is my baseline risk of developing heart disease, without a cholesterol medication?"

Cholesterol medications can cause side effects not uncommonly. Some studies cite a rate of 10% for the rate of muscle-related symptoms (this is probably the upper range of the rate, including everything from muscle aches all the way to significant muscle inflammation). You are really the only one who can weigh the chance of side effects to the benefits of the medication. But you might ask, "How would you compare the risks and benefits of this cholesterol medication?"

Finally, it's important to realize the imperfect nature of all guidelines. A guideline is merely a compendium of recommendations, and a recommendation can only be useful and relevant to you if two things are true: (a) it is based on good scientific evidence; (b) this evidence is relevant to your particular needs, sensitivities, and circumstances. About (a), you should ask your doctor, "How confident are you in the scientific evidence that backs up this recommendation?" Pay particular attention, for example, to how they understand the balance between risks and benefits in the subpopulation (i.e. the risk category) you fall into.

With regard to (b), of course, you are the only one who can make that determination, and no guideline can substitute for your considered, informed decision.

Image courtesy of the Mayo Clinic.

It was my turn this weekend to cover for my colleagues in our internal medicine practice. It wasn't all that strenuous. One of the hardest things to do, however, is justify to a patient a decision that another doctor has made that I might not agree with. It is hard to reconcile the many contradictions inherent in such a disagreement. On the one hand, the knowledge that medicine involves a spectrum of truths; on the other, the conviction that many courses of action taken for granted in today's practice are mistaken - overuse of tests and procedures among the most common of them. There is the relationship between the patient and their primary care doctor which one is loath to interfere with, and then there is the need of the particular person at that time. Finally, there is the fact I referred to above: we are all in a practice, and so - to a greater or lesser extent - we share patients. Sometimes, it's a good thing for our care to be viewed by a different pair of eyes and addressed by a new set of assumptions. Isn't that what quality care is meant to be, if we agree with the assumption that it is quantifiable - an opportunity for someone to evaluate care at a clarifying distance?

Whenever a colleague of mine sees my patients, I hope they might see something I have not noticed before. Maybe every person who sees a doctor should be granted that opportunity with regularity: a built-in second opinion to make sure opportunities and dangers aren't missed.

The note said she was non-compliant with her medications and that's why she ended up in the intensive care unit. But she came to her appointments with me every month, as regular as a sunny day in June (or, given her uncontrolled depression, as predictable as a rainy day in London). She couldn't take her medications, no matter how convenient it would be to pin the non-compliant label on her.

Money was always tight. Her family stole from her time and again. She barely had enough for rent. As depressed as she was, she wasn't sure sometimes that doctors or hospitals had anything to offer at all - maybe they were experimenting on her. (After all, they have been experimenting on people for generations, sometimes people that look much like her.)

To call her non-compliant is a peculiarly cruel bit of note lingo. If anything, the system was non-compliant: not pliant at all, but brittle like a piece of untempered glass, and jagged, drawing blood.

I saw a friend and colleague today, a physician, who is back from maternity leave, her child finally out of the NICU and mercifully healthy. She had the unwanted chance to see some of the health care system from the caregiver's side, and the glimpse wasn't all heartening. "It's true what they say," she remarked. "It's different to see things as a patient."

I haven't seen the health system much from the other side. We have had our children, but my wife was the one who assessed the quality of the obstetricians and gynecologists first-hand. I have taken these children to the doctor, but not for anything serious, thank goodness. We are healthy and my parents are well.

But time will pass, and people will age and fall ill. That is nothing to look forward to. Each experience, however, will shed a different light on what it means to be a patient - and perhaps, in so doing, these experiences will make me a better physician, or at any rate a more sympathetic human being.

By the same token, as you - whoever you are, whatever situation you find yourself in - make your way through the many small fears, midsized setbacks, and destabilizing tragedies that make up much of life, you will become more experienced in knowing how you and your family react to them. You can help your doctor understand what sort of a person you are when such difficulties hit, and continue to invest in a relationship that might help in these circumstances.