18秒，也许对于我们来说不过是一个发呆的时间，可它却是一个医生听病人描述病情的平均时间，由此做出的诊断到底有多少可信度呢？多少人由此而误诊甚至死亡……

Patience for Patients
A new book by a Harvard professor claims that doctors' personal feelings and preconceived notions can affect their diognoses of patients.  Katie Couric has more details.

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18 seconds. Did you know that on average is how long doctors let patients describe their symptoms before cutting them off? 18 seconds. You're about to meet a doctor who says that is a prescription for disaster, because when listening to a patient every second counts.

"Mrs. Hardin, time your shortness of breath"

Marry Hardin is in ICU with hypertension.

"She is tachycardiac."

Fluid in her lungs, "I'll try to help you breath", and one nervous next of Ken.

"What's wrong? Mom, are you feeling OK?"

Luckily Mary is a manikin and this is an exercise designed to make doctors think. Something Jerome Groopman says they don't do enough.

"I think it's time for a national conversation. 15 to 20 percent of all people are misdiagnosed in the United States. And in half of those cases it causes serious harm and sometimes death."

A professor in Harvard Medical School Dr. Groopman is trying to reduce those numbers with the new book “How Doctors Think”. In it, he spills some of the dirty little secretes of doctors and what dictates their diagnoses.

"One of my misdiagnoses is with a woman who I found irritating."

"You described her voice like nails on a chalkboard.”

"And we all have people that irritate us. She was complaining of discomfort under the center of her chest. And I basically closed my mind. I gave her antacids and stopped thinking. And it turned out that she had a tear in the aorta, the major vessel but leaves the heart."

Groopman admits that patient died.

"If the doctor doesn't like you, he or she closes their mind off. It's a setup for misdiagnoses."

Doctors not only bring their personal feelings to the exam room, Groopman says they carry around plenty of preconceived notions in their doctor's bag too.
"Patients need to talk, tell the doctor don't stereotype me.”

44-year old Lesley Bouvancy is a mother of three who went to a doctor with persistent diarrhea and fatigue. After a serious of test, she was told:
"It must be stress and it must be your inability to deal with raising your family and the stresses that come with that."

It was 3 years before it was discovered she had a cancerous tumor the size of a baseball in her small intestine.

"That is so infuriating."

"The most common stereotypes occur in women who are entering middle age and their symptoms are attributed snap judgment to stress or menopause"

So Dr. Groopman's prescription for patients, he says, turn the tables and question your doctor.

"A patient can say what else could it be, especially if it's not getting better, or could two things be going on at the same time? "

And Groopman says never be afraid to tell your doctor what's worrying you the most.

"And then the doctor becomes more sensitive to what the person is feeling about his or her body."

But there are orders for his fellow doctors too. He hopes this book will make them change the way they see their patients and themselves.

“Because we need as doctors, to think better in an open way, to listen more deeply, and to really change the way we make diagnoses. “

As for that misdiagnosed patient who died under his care, Doctor Groopman says the family took no legal action because he apologized. Doctor Groopman hopes more doctors will admit their mistakes so they can learn from them.

If you have a question for Doctor Groopman, go to CBSnews.com and just ask. We will post some of his answers next week.