Process of Thinking and Decision Making: Continued

5. Clinical Thinking and Nature's Laws

In nature everything happens with a cause and “cause and effect relationships”,  within a time frame. Diseases also occur with a cause and, cause and effect relationships, within a time frame. Diseases induce some damages to the body. Body perceives these damages as “action” and shows its “reaction” to them with compensatory mechanisms and immune system. In addition, patient seeks medical care and treatments. All these measures are considered reactions to the action of the disease. Thus, it becomes obvious that, there are clear relationships between nature’s laws, medical thinking and time. These relationships are summarized schematically in the link below.

 Clinical Thinking , The Law of Nature and  Time relationships.

6. General Principles of Medical Thinking and Decision Making

                                         “Knowing is not enough, we must apply.

                                           Willing is not enough, we must do.”

                                                                                               -Goethe.

Clinical thinking principles, as I see and understand them, are somewhat different from general thinking. In medicine, doctors deal with their patient’s medical problems, not their own, therefore it is easier to be more objective and emotion free. In addition, medical thinking and decision making must be without errors, since any medical errors, could cost patient’s life. Medical thinking has four dimensions, and the fourth  dimension is time. For that reason, doctors have to think about the  past, the  present and  the future of the illness.

The key principle in medical thinking is to find and establish the cause and the effect relationships. In addition, doctors need to figure out,  how the cause of the disease produced the effects. In medical language, this is called, "pathogenesis of the disease”.

Medical thinking could be difficult to understand for the general public  with no medical back ground. But I believe readers should give a good try, before giving up. By doing so, they will be able to understand how doctors think, so that they will be able to pick the best thinking doctors for themselves.