University of Virginia Health System

8 February 2006

How Doctors Think:
Clinical Judgment
and the Practice of Medicine

Kathryn Montgomery, Ph.D., Director
Program of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Northwestern University

Daniel M. Becker, M.D., Director, Center for Humanism in Medicine, UVA

Although physicians make use of science, medicine itself is not a science, Kathryn Montgomery asserts in a new book, but rather an interpretive practice that relies heavily on clinical reasoning. Our assuming medicine is strictly a science can have adverse consequences, and Montgomery suggests these can be reduced if we recognize the vital role of clinical judgment.

Kathryn Montgomery is Director of the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program and Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, as well as holding a secondary appointment as Professor of Medicine. Her research interests are the use of literature in medical education and the epistemology of medicine. She is the author of Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge (Princeton ) and How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgment and the Misdescription of Medicine (Oxford). She serves on the editorial boards of Literature and Medicine, Medical Humanities Review, and American Journal of Bioethics; she is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and is a fellow of the Hastings Center.