WIHI - A Podcast from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Date: February 10, 2011 Featuring: Pauline Chen, MD, Columnist, The New York Times;  Author, Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality Every now and again, a physician begins writing a regular column for a publication and you find yourself hooked before you know it. Part of it has to do with our being offered a way to better understand “how doctors think” and what they think about. In the case of Pauline Chen, what stands out is her frank honesty about what works and what isn’t working in medicine, not only affecting patients, but the ways physicians interact with one another, and with other practitioners. Many of Dr. Chen’s columns spring from her day-to-day experiences — from confronting assumptions about patients that physicians hold onto to confronting one’s own loss of confidence after making a mistake. Here’s an excerpt from her May 2010 New York Times column, "When Patients Share Their Stories, Health May Improve": "Devastated, I withdrew my needle and quickly took steps to confirm, the