Are Doctors Afraid to Talk Math with Their Patients?

Before patients can become savvy consumers of healthcare, they need information about their healthcare choices.  Too often, such information is nearly impossible to get, especially when it requires doctors to give patients useful statistics about things like treatment side effects.
Since publishing Critical Decisions this fall, I have received a number of emails from readers who have recognized their own medical histories in the pages of my book.  I received a particularly entertaining email from a professor in Canada, who relayed the following story.
He was in an emergency room suffering from kidney stones.  And for those of you who have never experienced kidney stones, take it from my mother: they are insanely painful.  “Worse than having twins,” she told me… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)

PeterUbel