So now we're going to talk about our values and preferences and biases.

And by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to describe the different types of medical

personas that everybody has or that different people have, discuss the importance of anecdotes

to decision making, and describe the concepts of loss aversion, belief projection, availability bias,

and paternalism.

Much of this lesson is based on the book, Your Medical Mind, by Dr. Grubman and Dr. Hartsband.

This is a very interesting book that was first suggested to me my Kim James, who who is a dula on the west coast of the united

states and in this book they suggest that we each have underlying biases that affect our decision

making but that most of the time we're not even aware of our biases. So I think the information you're going

to learn from this lesson is going to be very important to help you understand why people make

the decisions that they do. So there are a couple different types of medical mind categories

that you can have. And the first one is doubters versus believers. And a doubter is someone who approaches

medical treatment or advice with skepticism. An example of a doubter might be that a client doubts

what her physician is telling her about avoiding lunchmeat and avoiding wine with dinner.

A believer is someone who believes strongly that there is a medical solution to his or her problems.

An example of this would be a pregnant woman who believes that she can find a medication to

control her nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, or a pregnant person who believes that her doctor

knows best at all times.

Now, with all of these categories, it doesn't have to be one or another.

You can exist on a spectrum, so you may lean more towards the doubter side or lean more towards

the believer side. With the minimalist versus maximalist category, a minimalist is someone who

wants to avoid treatment, if at all possible. They operate under the belief that less is more.

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