How to Think Like a Doctor

By Michael Mangold

How to Think Like a Doctor describes how a physician thinks. Whether you are a Medical Assistant student, a nursing student, a pre-med student, a new medical student, or even going into health care administration, you will benefit from discovering the process of how an M.D. or D.O. views any particular patient encounter and arrives at a diagnosis. The Diagnosis is key and ties together all of the other elements of the encounter so that a Plan can be formed to make the patient better. Improvement in health is why doctors do what they do and now you can gain an insight into that thought process.
Even if you are not a health care student or provider, How to Think Like a Doctor will make you a more knowledgeable patient. My best patients are those who become experts about their own bodies and their own medical and health issues. In addition to diseases, doctors address pain issues, mental health issues, dietary concerns, and even societal ills. Some physicians strive to make healthy people even better. So if you fall into any of these categories, you will benefit from this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Mangold
• Release date: Sep 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370814602

Michael Mangold

Winding down my career as an ER physician, I went to Nicaragua in 2013 to teach medical English to the med students in Puerto Cabezas. Our plans changed when the medical director of the school could not obtain funding so I was forced to look for other sources of income in Managua first, then San Juan del Sur, our adopted home. While in SJdS I published three eBooks on Amazon: "How to Think Like a Doctor," "Cómo Pensar Como un Doctor," and "Barefoot Doctors." I wrote all three with the intention of bringing quality medical knowledge and practice to underserved areas of the world. My "mission" was cut short over the Thanksgiving weekend that year when I was mugged five times that Thursday and Friday night. The first two weren't so bad but by the fifth mugging I was left for dead. Why would any sane gringo be out after dark in a large Central American city? I was trying to find my son Ben, who (as I later found out) was being hidden by the American embassy there. Find the full story in my new book, "My Worst Thanksgiving Ever."

Book preview

How to Think Like a Doctor

By Michael Mangold, MD

© Michael Mangold 2013, 2016

Table of Contents

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

What is This Book?

Introduction

How to Think Like a Doctor

Subjective

Objective

Assessment

Plan

Summary

Glossary

References

Additional Resources

Books by Michael Mangold MD

About the Author

Preface to the First Edition

I came to Nicaragua originally to teach medical English to Nicaraguan medical students and intended to use this version as their textbook. My eventual goal is to revive Chairman Mao’s concept of Barefoot Doctors and make quality medical and health care available to underserved areas of the world. It is not only a dream of mine but is the logical follow-up to my first non-profit endeavor The Medicine Cabinet, with which we collected, repackaged, and sent medications and medical equipment to areas of need. Our first shipment was sent to the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire in 1994 and was one of the first humanitarian projects to arrive there since the tragedy was not recognized as a humanitarian crisis by developed nations for several months.

The world desperately needs kind, compassionate, and capable health care workers. Ironically (and sadly), this is the polar opposite of what is happening in the United States now where a good doctor is now defined by how quickly he or she charts. I personally do not want to go to the grave with the epitaph Here lies Michael Mangold, a good doctor because he charted on time.

Michael Mangold, MD

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

September 2013

Preface to the Second Edition

Quite a bit has changed in medicine and my life since I first published this book. The United States has formally adopted ICD-10 for classifying diagnoses and so I have made the changes necessary to reflect this in the part of the book titled Plan. I have also cleaned up this book in order to make it easier to read on cellphones and tablets. Besides this increase in readability, I want to integrate the intention of this book (medical education) with my overall goal of providing quality healthcare to underserved areas of the world and one way to do that is take advantage of the power of the internet to provide easy access to massive amounts of medical information.

While my goals have remained unchanged in the three years since the initial publication, my life’s situation has changed dramatically. I no longer live in Nicaragua because that mission was aborted when the U.S embassy in Nicaragua conspired with my ex-wife to kidnap my son Benjamin. We are now both back in the States and you can read about these tragic chain of events in my book My Worst Thanksgiving Ever. I am also semi-retired, thanks to the debilitating injuries I received in Managua trying to find Ben. That does free me up to write, hence this revision.

As I tell readers of my blog, I hope that you will Learn and Enjoy the important things I have to say.

Michael Mangold MD

Chicago, IL USA

September 2016

What Is This Book?

How to Think Like a Doctor describes how a physician thinks. Whether you are a Medical Assistant student, a nursing student, a pre-med student, a new medical student, or even going into health care administration, you will benefit from discovering the process of how an M.D. or D.O. views any particular patient encounter and arrives at a diagnosis. The Diagnosis is key and ties together all of the other elements of the encounter so that a Plan can be formed to make the patient better. Improvement in health is why doctors do what they do and now you can gain an insight into that thought process.

Even if you are not a health care student or provider, How to Think