Newsletter
Match and Mismatch2024-09-09
“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
—Sir William Osler
When there is a match between the characteristics of a person and the environmental resources to achieve general or specific life goals, success is easier. In medicine, that means understanding exactly who a person is (trait/diagnosis), what a person has (state/severity), and matching them to the right treatments.
When there is a mismatch, success if harder. That is often the case in psychiatry, both in my clinical experience with the patients referred to me for a second opinion, and in the patients referred to us for testing at MindX Sciences. Patients are often labelled as “treatment-resistant”, and end up on irrational polypharmacy that creates it’s own set of problems.
Helping people get unstuck and move on with their lives by providing the correct match, with the occasional check-up or tune-up in the future as needed, is one of the joys of precision medicine. We should measure success in healthcare by the degree of independence of our patients, not really needing us anymore. It is a bad mechanic whose customers need to bring the car to the shop frequently.