by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Emergency physician Dr. Pat Croskerry tells the story of the day he misdiagnosed a patient who was experiencing unstable angina – chest pain caused by coronary artery disease, and often a warning sign of oncoming heart attack. But this is what he’d said before sending that patient home:
“I’m not at all worried about your chest pain. You probably overexerted yourself and strained a muscle. My suspicion that this is coming from your heart is about zero.”
In a later interview with Dr. Jerome Groopman (author of a book I love called How Doctors Think), Dr. Croskerry explained how easily that misdiagnosis happened: Continue reading “Signals, noise, context – and your doctor’s brain”
ve on an island, so we’re often dependent on the ferries that carry islanders to the mainland and back. And because this is Canada’s west coast, high winds or rough seas can very occasionally cause sudden sailing delays or outright cancellations. When this happens, we often don’t know when sailings will resume, and nobody can tell us. Uncertainty like this about what daily life will bring includes both the routinely ordinary (what’s causing this traffic jam?) and the potentially important (when will 
Heart Sisters 