Gawande, ?The Case of the Red Leg?

Discussion questions: Gawande, "The Case of the Red Leg" (2002)

1. How does Gawande organize this essay? How does he link the different sections together?

2. In what ways does this case count as a medical mystery? How might Berton Rouéche have written the case if he had included it in his book The Medical Detectives (the book that includes "Eleven Blue Men")?

3. Wennberg's study (page 248) on the extreme inconsistency in what medical practitioners do would suggest that rational thinking plays disturbingly little role in medicine. Can this be true? What explanations can you think of for such inconsistency from one location to another? How could such variation be reduced?

4. How often do you use intuition in your own decision making? How often do you use something like an informal decision tree? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each in daily life? In medical decision making?