Sep 17, 2015
When someone has a heart attack, he or she is immediately rushed to
the emergency room. At that point, the doctor has to make a choice:
either treat the patient with clot-busting drugs or perform
invasive surgery. But how do doctors decide which procedure is
best? Do they rely on what's worked in the past, or do they choose
based on the individual patient? How do these decisions influence
patient outcomes? Janet Currie, Henry Putnam Professor of Economics
and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School
and chair of the Department of Economics, wanted to answer these
questions. She discusses her findings on this episode of WooCast.
Currie, who is director of Princeton's Center for Wellbeing, is a
panelist at the upcoming Princeton-Fung Global Forum, "Modern
Plagues: Lesson Learned from the Ebola Crisis."