What if we all asked questions, and examined the patient together, compared notes and decided on a course of treatment -- with the patient?
Editor Robert Gottlieb, for instance, was so involved in the rewriting of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 that Gottlieb once described the editing process as "two surgeons working on the same patient together".
But what if mammogram and M.R.I. are presented as more or less equal alternatives, each with its own set of risks and benefits, and the doctor and patient together decide which course to pursue?
— Blogger Katie Allison Granju calls the situation the "perfect storm of unethical medical care" — a fluke that brought a "psychologically vulnerable patient" together with a "one-in-a-million crazy doctor".
After retiring, Dr. Rowland kept attending weekly "muscle rounds" in Columbia's neurology department, an activity he had started in which senior doctors and trainees would examine a patient together, for teaching purposes.
One case of imperfect anatomical outcome was noted (persistence of stage 1 cystocele in one patient) together with two other cases of failure of the treatment of cystocele (relapse to stage 2 cystocele).
Likewise, the commission said, when a Medicare beneficiary receives a certain type of echocardiogram in a doctor's office, the government and the patient together pay a total of $188.
Maybe — but it didn't really seem so, and when we all met the patient together it was clear that both she and her medical team had bigger things to worry about — among them her pancreatitis, kidney failure and unstable diabetes.
They leave the hospital where Nattie is a patient together and Nick is preternaturally aware of his surroundings: "We listen to the cicadas.... Sometimes they make a dry rattle, like a can full of coins, and sometimes it's just a waveless line of sound".
The findings were discussed with the patient together with the treatment options for this malignant tumour requiring a low-level Brown class 2b maxillectomy [5].
Considering the age and clinical condition of the patient together with the stage of the disease, no further therapy was recommended by the tumor board and he was discharged home.
