"Second Trope and Go": Dr. Jeremy Faust on the Language of the Handoff

Nothing in medicine is risk-free. Even aspirin, a cornerstone of cardiology, carries a risk. Clinicians are running a risk-benefit calculation constantly. Patients are too. The challenge is making a decision, even though there’s risk, together. Cardiologist Dr. Akshay Pendyal returns to talk with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar about the gap between population risk and the individual patient, why even “sure, let’s run the test just to see” isn’t risk free, and how handing patients the numbers and stepping back isn't gonna cut it. They discuss how, even as doctors, they struggle sometimes with managing risk, data inundation, and what to do next. But ultimately a comfort with uncertainty and the ability to guide a patient in making a plan are just as essential to practicing medicine as anything else. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nobody teaches a class on uncertainty. Nobody hands you a manual for breaking bad news, or for what to say when a patient asks a question you can't answer. Most of the hardest parts of medicine, doctors learn on the job. The Blind Spot is the podcast for doctors who wish they had more time to talk shop with other doctors. In each episode, Harvard physician Dr. Aditi Nerurkar sits down with a fellow clinician to find one blind spot: a place where a doctor and a patient both mean well and still miss each other. Then they look for a way through it, together. Delivering hard news. Keeping up with science that moves faster than the guidelines. The admin that eats the day. And a few laughs along the way. Consider it your audible doctor's lounge. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Robert Wachter has spent his career watching medicine absorb newtechnology, from the paper chart to the electronic record to the current moment with AI. Theprofessor and chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF sits down with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar towork out where these powerful new tools may be best situated to actually improve care. Forinstance, models flagging elevated breast cancer risk in scans that read as normal. Systemsmatching patients to trials. Possibilities and possible pitfalls abound, but this is an exciting leapindeed. And, for anyone predicting the end of human doctors in the exam room, take note. Dr.Wachter closes on the doorman fallacy, a lesson from 1950s hotels... turns out there are somevery human things no robot can replace. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It can be scary to go to the doctor. Patients may be afraid of bad news, of seeming difficult, of taking up too much time. Doctors might feel uncomfortable delivering bad news, or bringing up the cost of care. This very human layer of healthcare is our blind spot.Dr. Lucy McBride, a primary care physician of more than twenty years and author of Beyond the Prescription, argues that fear is inevitable, but not irreducible. Dr. McBride argues for humility, mutual candor, and even a bit of humor as she lays out practical tips and fresh ideas about how to navigate this very ancient divide.Because by pressing beyond fear, doctors can connect cancer patients with resources they didn’t even know were needed; accurately evaluate risk tolerance; and above all form a human connection and achieve better outcomes as true partners. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most physicians were trained to believe Munchausen by proxy is vanishingly rare. Andrea Dunlop has spent years talking to the clinicians, survivors, and researchers who know otherwise. In this conversation with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, she makes the case that the condition is far more common than the medical community recognizes, and that the structural reasons physicians miss it are themselves a form of institutional blind spot.