RT Journal
A1 Volk ML, Ubel PA
T1 IGnorance is bliss?—reply
JF Archives of Internal Medicine
JO Archives of Internal Medicine
YR 2011
FD September 26
VO 171
IS 17
SP 1600
OP 1601
DO 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.429
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2011.429
AB 
In response to our article, Dr Sutton argues that the solution to incidental findings is not to limit their presence, but rather to improve physicians' ability to interpret them and explain their limitations to patients. We certainly agree that current medical training in patient communication is inadequate and suspect that many physicians could benefit from an improved understanding of Bayesian statistics. However, these solutions are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason why the health care system could not both improve physician training as well as implement the simple steps we have proposed to limit unsolicited diagnostic information. These steps would not be a panacea and would not be applicable to every clinical situation. But, as we have discussed in our article,1 to rely entirely on physicians' and patients' ability to process information would be to ignore a vast body of literature demonstrating that humans are not always rational creatures and that, consequently, suspicious information is hard to ignore, even when people know that it is in their best interests to do so.2 And yes, we still perform physical examinations on our patients!