Doctor, interrupting

Lisa Sanders has a new book out called Every Patient Tells a Story. Here are some interesting stats involving doctors and their patients:

-- Doctors are misdiagnosing their patients' ailments at about 10 to 15% of the time.
-- Doctors let patients talk for an average of 20 seconds before they interrupt. Some let them talk for just 3 seconds before they interrupt with another question. The chance that the patient goes back and finishes that story is almost zero.
-- Up to 50% of the time when a patient leaves the doctor's office, they have symptoms that they didn't get to talk about.
-- Half the time, the doctor and the patient won't agree on what the purpose of the visit was.