“ Clinical Man ” – by Clifton Meador (Why Do So Many Of Us Need Medical Tests to Tell Us That We Are Well?)

Editor’s Note– Below, a post by Dr. Clifton Meador, author of more than a dozen insightful, often witty books including Sketches of a Small Town, Circa 1940 and True Medical Detective Stories.  (When reviewing Sketches on Amazon, I compared Meador to Mark Twain.) In the post below, Meador refers to one of his best-known stories, a tale set in the not too distant future titled “The Last Well Person.”  The fiction, which was published as an “Occasional Note” in NEJM in 1994, uses satire to comment on the folly of our obsessive drive to test and screen every well person in America–until we find something wrong with each and every one of them. That “Note” ultimately inspired Dr. Nortin Hadler to write a book that would help many begin to understand what is wrong with American healthcare: The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health Care System. (2007) This is not the first time that Clifton Meador has published on HealthBeat. Some of his most popular posts include: –”The Mind-Body Connection: Could Psycho Somatic Conditions Account for 30% of Chronic Conditions? –”Unheard Hearts–a Metaphor” – “How Medicine Became a Growth Business;” Today, Meador is a professor  of clinical medicine at Vanderbilt. The essay  below originally appeared on The Pharos of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society, November 2011, and was recently cross-posted on The Health Care Blog (TH...
Source: Health Beat - Category: American Health Authors: Tags: worried well Clifton Meador medical tests overtreatment Uncategorized The Last Well Person medical testing Nortin Hadler Source Type: blogs