Book Reviews

Title: How Doctors Think

Authors: Jerome Groopman, M.D.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Publication Date: March 12, 2008 (Reprint edition)

Location: New York, New York

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-61003-7
ISBN-10: 0-618-61003-0

Pages: 336

Price: $24.99 CAD Paperback (Indigo Books & Music)

Review Date: 23/11/2021

Target Audience: Adult readers, physicians, and healthcare providers.

Summary: Readers are led through a series of clinical scenarios highlighting physician susceptibility to cognitive errors in the medical field. Drawing upon wisdom from physician interviews, Groopman provides strategies and approaches to rectify cognitive errors, steering doctors, patients, and their families out of harms-way.   

Strengths: Groopman’s physician training allows him to uniquely narrate the viewpoints and ruminations of doctors and patients in each clinical scenario. He is highly skilled at translating complex medical vignettes into lay terms, making it enjoyable to delve into the cognition of renowned physicians, while keeping the material easily digestible for the audience. Through an exploration of intellect, intuition, and attention to detail, Groopman intricately recounts how physicians unknowingly fall victim to a cascade of cognitive errors and captivates the audiences’ attention toward error mitigation. He opens and closes every chapter with the harrowing potential for harm and narrow escape to safety, inviting readers to critically reflect on each healthcare experience presented.

Weaknesses: Although enjoyable to read, there is no recapitulation or categorical summary of cognitive errors, with accompanying best approach(es) to tackle such errors. There would be greater utility to the reader if: the errors were easily accessible, examples of error disclosure were provided, and there was no additional cognitive load required to re-read each hefty 20–30-page chapter to recall the cognitive error under scrutiny and resolution put forward.

Review: As a whole, Groopman provides his audience with an effortless and indulging read, filled with the self-reflection of seasoned physicians with the vantage -point of patient safety at the forefront. This book is highly recommended to and written with ardour for all persons, patients, and healthcare providers. His text is easy to navigate, with compelling stories offering the apex of advice that ‘good thinking takes time.’

Rating: 4.5/5

Target Audience: College teachers and teachers in all settings of higher education.

Summary: Designed for both novice and seasoned teachers, Brookfield delivers a practical guide of adult learning strategies filled with a gamut of anecdotal and research-derived approaches. Centering on self-reflective practices, each chapter matches student needs with effective teaching tools to dynamically respond to students’ experience of learning, all while showcasing the unpredictability faced by teachers teaching.

Strengths: Brookfield artfully uses insightful vignettes to inspire college teachers of how to engage with and teach to a multitude of adult learners. Brookfield deserves praise for updating chapter developments to include addressing racism, incorporating virtual learning, and the use of ‘play’ while promoting critical thinking in classroom settings. Brookfield combines theory, practice, and anecdote to send teachers messages of inspiration and support, as we can all be ‘skillful teachers.’

Weaknesses: Although Brookfield strongly emphasizes the use of critical reflection throughout this book, references to well-renowned contributors to critical reflection, such as Donald Schon or John Dewey are omitted. Moreover, although teaching on racism is essential to recognize in all learning environments, this chapter is informed by Brookfield’s own narrative, helping white college teachers navigate discomfort; he neglects to address power-dynamics and the systemic barriers for both teachers and students of colour. There is a lack of pointed guidance on allyship and critical reflection to address racism in the classroom environment.

Review: Overall, Brookfield seeks to inspire college teachers with techniques that are transferrable to university and didactic teaching environments. He instills readers with a sense that teaching is “whatever helps students learn,” and leaves readers with the wisdom that imparting the experience of learning, is essential to skillful teachers.

This book serves as a practical guide for building teaching skills, reflecting on teaching practices, and provides a joyful read, particularly for disillusioned teachers.

Rating: 3.5/5

Title: Curriculum Development for Medical Education: A Six-Step Approach (1st edition)

Author: David E. Kern, Patricia A. Thomas, Donna M Howard, and Eric B. Bass

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Publication Date: August 17, 1998

Location: Baltimore, MD

ISBN-10: ‎ 0801858445

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0801858444

Pages: 178

Price: $26.19 CAD Paperback (Amazon Canada)

Review Date: 06/02/2022

Target Audience: Curriculum developers and program directors responsible for health practitioner educational experiences at the level of students, residents, fellows, and practicing clinicians.

Summary: Kern and colleagues present an easily digestible 9-chapter text that sequentially outlines curriculum development for medical education. This textbook helps those who are beginning or in the middle of developing a curriculum by utilizing six-steps: (1) Problem identification and general needs assessment, (2) Targeted needs assessment, (3) Goals and specific measurable objectives, (4) Educational strategies (targeting knowledge, attitude, skills) (5) Implementation, and (6) Evaluation and feedback (both at individual and program levels). The six steps are not linear, but instead, occur in coinciding ways as the curriculum evolves.

Strengths: Kern and colleagues synthesize an easily readable introductory textbook for anyone interested in medical education curricular development. There is an emphasis throughout the text that medical educators should feel a strong sense of responsibility to meet the needs of their learners, patients, and greater society by systemically designing curriculum. Each chapter concludes with a question set to invoke thought, discussion, and to apply the principles of the chapter to the reader’s intended curriculum. This well referenced text serves as a foundational and masterful guide for readers to design their own curricular development projects.

Weaknesses: To better understand where curriculum development has come, this original text was written in 1998 and thus lacks reference to the modernization and digital methods of implementation and evaluation that we are now immersed within. There are later editions (now on the 4th edition of print slated for August 2022) that may reflect an evolution in curricular design.

Review: This original textbook on approaching curricular development pars down pedagogic methods of design into a well-planned and uncomplicated framework for medical educators. Although older in publication, as the first edition print, readers are provided with a practical, generalizable, and timeless approach to curriculum development.

Rating: 4.5/5