From Misdiagnosed Patient To Patient Advocate
Last week, in a minor but rewarding instance of serendipity, I was reading reviews of How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman,1 which focuses on the reasons doctors misdiagnose a significant number of their patients, when an especially thoughtful comment was submitted to a post on my AlignMap blog.2
Startled by the notion of someone in healthcare promoting a point of view that was not only reasonable but even invoked my favorite rule of thumb, The 80/20 Rule (AKA, Pareto’s Law), I emailed Trisha Torrey, the author of the comment, only to discover that, in addition to having organized an impressive web site devoted to patient advocacy, she was also [Alert – Payoff to this meandering anecdote is imminent] the victim of a misdiagnosis of potentially catastrophic proportions.3
Trisha Torrey’s medical misadventure is a fascinating (and scary) read that complements Groopman’s book and, as a bonus, has a happy ending. That narrative can be found at ~Who is Trisha?~
That event led to her current career as a patient advocate and the creation of her advocacy web sites at ~EPA Websites~ and her blog at ~Every Patient’s Advocate~
A rundown on her AlignMap comment and our subsequent e-mail exchange, among other topics, is included in her post, ~Oh Say can you C? Compliance, Colonoscopy and more~.
Footnotes
- How Doctors Think is the book featured in the March 20,2007 post, The Good News Is That 80% Of The Time The Doctor Is Right ~back~
- AlignMap is the web site and blog I manage that focuses on patient compliance with treatment ~back~
- Her AlignMap comment had no direct connection to her history of being misdiagnosed ~back~
