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How Doctors Think

There is a book that challenges, in some regards, Gladwell's concept of "Blink." Dr. Jerome Groopman argues that doctors that work from the gut generally make more mistakes. He qualifies this by arguing that it's when doctors become anchored to their gut reactions and diagnoses and refuse to reconsider that trouble insues.

What is very interesting for the rhetoric is Groopman's reason for writing the book. He states that he wants patients to know how doctors think so that they can help their doctor's think better. Such a conception of audience and audience interaction is a really interesting framework for understand and developing ethos. Older versions of ethos saw it as fairly stable and something developed for an audience. Some contemporary versions, however, see ethos as something a rhetor develops with the audience each time. Dr. Groopman seems to argue that such a progressive construction of the doctor's ethos can lead to better diagnosis and better care.

Submitted by nrivers on Tue, 2007-03-20 20:12.
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Intertexuality strikes again
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Submitted by Adryan on Wed, 2007-03-21 10:36.

But just how many audiences are we dealing with here? There's the doctors who go with their guts and need to be reformed, there's patients who trust their doctors and should be more poractive, there's the patients for whom this book might avoid a malpractice. What interests me is seeing this book as one doctor appealing to other doctors through the layman audience. A heirarchy of audiences.

When we discuss the audience it is both a dynamic and a stable group. It has new needs with each instance and it is responsive to the ways in which we met previous needs. In this example, ethos is contingent on multiple other ethos. In essence, this is a response to a crisis of ethos. Ethos is not limited to a singular text and is not entirely under the control of the author.