A Whole New Mind in Healthcare

Brad Blackman / Apr 30th / Comments

I’ve been reading the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink. The premise of the book is this: the Information Age of the 20th Century has relied on skills that are more or less considered left-brained (”L-directed,” as Pink calls it) traits like analysis, fact-finding, and deduction. But the emerging Conceptual Age that is set to dominate the 21st Century relies more on inventiveness, empathy, meaning, so-called “right-brained” (”R-directed”) traits.

Healthcare as a whole is very left-brained and analytic. If a patient exhibits certain symptoms, there is a high probability that the patient has a particular illness that can be successfully treated in a certain way. Because medicine relies so much on logic and facts, it stands to reason that medicine, or any other scientific field, is likely to be dominated by L-directed thinkers.

Interpersonal communication, on the other hand, tends to be a rather R-directed activity. The right hemisphere of the brain processes emotions, facial expressions, and tone of voice. R-directed people tend to be better at making emotional connections, finding patterns, intuitively synthesizing information gleaned from people’s stories, rather than solving problems solely by means of a list of hard facts.

Yet many doctors tend to disdain anecdotes. However, an empathic physician has the potential to save lives by going beyond just the facts and paying attention to patients’ stories.

Let’s look at the case of two mail workers who were infected in the 2001 anthrax scare, as described in A Whole New Mind:

…(t)wo postal workers went to different health care centers complaining of similar symptoms. One man told his doctor he felt achy and ill and he believed he’d been exposed to anthrax, which had recently been found at the postal facility where he worked. The doctor telephoned the relevant public health departments, which told him that anthrax was not a risk and that he needn’t prescribe antibiotics. So he followed the rules and sent his patient home with orders to take some Tylenol. A few days later, the patient died – of anthrax. Meanwhile, the other postal worker went to an emergency room at a different hospital, just a few miles away. His doctor — who didn’t know about the patient above — examined the worker and suspected that he’d contracted pneumonia. But then the man told her that he worked at the postal facility hit with an anthrax scare. So she ordered another test, and even though she didn’t think that he had anthrax, something still nagged at her. She gave the man a prescription for Cipro, the antibiotic prescribed for anthrax, just in case. And instead of sending him home, as she had initially planned, she kept him at the hospital and referred him to an infectious-disease specialist. As it turned out, the man did have anthrax. And as it also turned out, the doctor’s empathic listening, intuition, and willingness to deviate from the rules meant the difference between life and death. “I just listened to my patient,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “He said, ‘I know my body and something’s just not right.’” Empathy — his doctor’s ability to intuit what someone else is feeling — saved his life.

So there’s a compelling case for intuition and making emotional connections when administering healthcare, but what about healthcare marketing? Shouldn’t marketing actions be justified and measured by a series of metrics? In a day and age when just about every medical practice in a given field offers similar services at similar prices, the practices that make human connections will always win. If you can connect with your patients on an emotional level, you’ll give yourself that much more credibility. If your patients feel like you care, they’ll tell their friends and family about the experience they had under your care. That’s the best kind of marketing or advertising — word of mouth — and it can’t be bought.