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Speaking with Doctors on Access Utah Tuesday

  Almost 20 billion times each year, a person walks into a doctor's office and becomes a patient. Dr. Kevin Jones says that physicians can’t tell you what they don’t know. They can tell you when they don’t know, but they might not. Dr. Jones, in his book "What Doctors Cannot Tell You: Clarity, Confidence, and Uncertainty in Medicine," explores the uncertainty that pervades medicine.

He says there is a code of silence within which too many physician-patient conversations take place, and that his goal is to help you learn to talk to your physician, how to understand what she or he says; and then to help you ask your physician to invite you more fully into that privileged space where decisions are made, not as subject alone, but as the interested party. Dr. Jones asserts that bigger and better systems can’t fix the problems in medicine, but that educated and empowered patients working with honest physicians can. 
On Tuesday’s Access Utah we revisit a conversation with Dr. Kevin Jones, an orthopedic surgeon and scientist at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and Primary Children's Medical Center at the University of Utah. 

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.