HISTORY 199 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Medical Statistics
22 Mar 2016
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Groopman"s article grapples with the difficult reality that doctors often face of having to tell their patients that they are going to die. Groopman primarily speaks of one young female patient that he had who had metastatic breast cancer. While she was only twenty-eight, her chances or surviving longer than two years were still slim because her cancer had spread to other parts of her body. In revealing this cancer to her, groopman recounts several previous patients that he had and what he had told them. While in one case, he told a woman that she only had a few months longer to live, she ended up living for four years longer. In another instance, he offered far too much optimism to a patient named henry gold. Despite knowing that gold"s chances of survival were slim, groopman still spoke as if there were other treatments that may be effective.
