Video: “The Too-Informed Patient”

This video, “The Too-Informed Patient,” came my way lately. It’s featured on NPR’s Mar­ket­place website:

The Too Informed Patient from Marketplace on Vimeo.

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The pup­peteer skit fea­tures the inter­ac­tion between a young man with a rash and his older physi­cian. The patient is an informed kind of guy: He’s checked his own med­ical record on the doctor’s web­site, read up on rashes in the Boston Globe, checked pix on WebMD, seen an episode of “Gray’s Anatomy” about a rash and, most inven­tively, checked iDiagnose, a hypo­thet­i­cal app (I hope) that led him to the con­clu­sion that he might have epi­der­mal necro­sis.

“Not to worry,” the patient informs Dr. Matthews, who mean­while has been try­ing to exam­ine him (“Say aaahhh” and more): He’s eli­gi­ble for an exper­i­men­tal pro­to­col. After some back-and-forth in which the doc­tor — who’s been quite cour­te­ous until this point, call­ing the patient “Mr. Horcher,” for exam­ple, and not admon­ish­ing the patient who’s got so many ideas of his own — the doc­tor says that the patient may be exac­er­bat­ing the con­di­tion by scratch­ing it, and ques­tions the wis­dom of tak­ing an exper­i­men­tal treat­ment for a rash.

“I just need you to sign this paper,” says the patient.

The doctor-puppet pauses momen­tar­ily, seem­ingly resigned to a new role. After the patient leaves, the doc­tor thinks to weigh him­self. The skit ends with the sounds of key­board typing.

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The piece sup­plies thought-provoking details in under two and a half min­utes. It’s a use­ful teach­ing tool, among other things. There’s been some dis­cus­sion about it on the NPR site, the Patient Empow­ered Blog, the Health Care Blog and else­where. Some com­ments sug­gest annoy­ance, that the “informed patient” is mis­rep­re­sented here as exag­ger­ated or fool­ish, or that the skit is off mark.

To me it rings true, rep­re­sent­ing an older doc­tor who’s try­ing — openmindedly but not on the cut­ting edge — to embrace new tech­nol­ogy, and has the patient’s inter­ests at heart. His efforts and his knowl­edge are set aside.

My reac­tion is sad­ness. Am I the only one?

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Thanks to the team who cre­ated this insight­ful pro­duc­tion: Pro­duced by Gre­gory Warner and Mara Zepeda, cre­ated by Sebasti­enne Mund­heim of White Box The­atre, acted by Charles Del­Mar­celle and Doug Greene, and voiced by two actors from Philadelphia’s Pig Iron The­atre Com­pany, and to NPR’s Mar­ket­place for presenting.

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*


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