Stories vs Statistics
Stories are a lot more fun than statistics. Stories have a hero, victim and villain. Stories have a moral. Stories tell what happened to one person. Stories can be true. We are born to love stories.
We like the story of the poor but hard working widow who wins the lottery. We like the story of the villain who gets his just deserves.
Statistics are almost always fictions. They tell what happens, in general, to a group, but not what happens to an individual. In fact, what happens on average may not happen to any one! Statistics are about probabilities.
When it comes to health care, doctors and patients speak different languages. Doctors speak statistics; patients speak stories.
The only health care providers who speak the patients' language are those who sell the stories. These are the testimonial storytellers that we see on television and hear on the radio...the alternative care advocates and their successful clients who tell their tales of individual success.
Doctors know good stories too, but are forbidden from telling these if they violate patient privacy. Furthermore, if a patient is wooed to a treatment based upon a testimonial or anecdote and something goes wrong, the doctor can be held liable for not providing "informed consent" which is a statistically based approach to a description of possible outcomes of treatment.
Unlike P.T. Barnum, DocBrain will give you no moral to this story. We live in the natural world where important things should be explained by rules and numbers. Yet, where the rules and numbers are not satisfying, a good story may just be what the patient wants, even if it is not what the doctor ordered.
We like the story of the poor but hard working widow who wins the lottery. We like the story of the villain who gets his just deserves.
Statistics are almost always fictions. They tell what happens, in general, to a group, but not what happens to an individual. In fact, what happens on average may not happen to any one! Statistics are about probabilities.
When it comes to health care, doctors and patients speak different languages. Doctors speak statistics; patients speak stories.
The only health care providers who speak the patients' language are those who sell the stories. These are the testimonial storytellers that we see on television and hear on the radio...the alternative care advocates and their successful clients who tell their tales of individual success.
Doctors know good stories too, but are forbidden from telling these if they violate patient privacy. Furthermore, if a patient is wooed to a treatment based upon a testimonial or anecdote and something goes wrong, the doctor can be held liable for not providing "informed consent" which is a statistically based approach to a description of possible outcomes of treatment.
Unlike P.T. Barnum, DocBrain will give you no moral to this story. We live in the natural world where important things should be explained by rules and numbers. Yet, where the rules and numbers are not satisfying, a good story may just be what the patient wants, even if it is not what the doctor ordered.
posted by DocBrain at
1:58 PM
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