Communication, explanation and understanding

Judges in the US are attending a programme of classes to educate them in the science and medicine that underlies the detection, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of disease. The programme is intended to help in the ajudication of medical malpractice cases.

In addition to acquiring a scientific knowledge base, judges said they learned that understanding physician-patient communication is key to interpreting complex medical cases.

Ohio trial Judge Lee Sinclair said he was particularly enlightened by a mock exercise in which a newly diagnosed cancer patient evaluated treatment options with several doctors, including a surgeon and an oncologist.

When the judges got together to discuss the conversation, “what you realized was everyone in the room heard things in a different way,” Sinclair said. “Often what you hear in medical malpractice cases is the physician saying he explained it to the patient and the patient saying it never happened.”

The insights are especially valuable in helping judges eliminate potentially frivolous lawsuits or find alternate ways to resolve legal disputes without going to trial, said Marvin J. Garvis, a Maryland federal judge.

I found this exercise interesting for a number of reasons. How many times have we heard someone say, "But I told you that", or "You never told me about that". Sometimes, we have been told information but the stress or shock of the circumstances under which we were told means that we don't remember. Sometimes, we retain fragments of the information, rather than its context.