I just finished reading The Invisible Gorilla (and Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us) by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simon, a book that I think raises compelling questions for patients and health professionals. The title refers to a now-classic experiment in psychology: Subjects were shown a video of people passing a basketball around. The [...]

  Tell me a story and I will follow. Tell me your story and I am so on board it’s ridiculous.   I work at a children’s hospital that has a blog. But Bloorview Kids Rehab does more than post. It tells stories. “Lena distracts herself by threading bravery beads onto necklaces — each marking [...]

  This is a story about today.   So you’re a patient. You’ve been waiting a long, long time. This place never gets better. Even though this is “your appointment” and “your day”, despite knowing that the doctors are so, so nice — wonderful, really – you find yourself cringing at the unmistakable “busy” in [...]

  I thought it was about time to write a post about the woes of doctor-patient email. Last week, a friend was having some issues with his phone, so his family doctor’s office couldn’t get in touch to inform him of the date of his specialist’s appointment. He didn’t know about the trouble until he [...]

  The same CBC article (on Canadian doctors’ love-hate relationship with EMRs) that featured Dr. Greiver’s EMR also published this comment that didn’t sit very well with me: "Let’s be honest," says researcher Dave Ludwick. "Doctors have gone to school to become doctors, to understand how the body works and remedy that body’s failings, not [...]