Personalized Medicine and Patient-Centric Learning: A Core Requirement for Informed Decision Making

A scan of the literature on physician/patient learning points to an abyss of information on how well physicians are learning about the dynamic research on pharmacogenomics, new discoveries in molecular biology and all other factors affecting medical care today. The dearth of research spreads further to how well physicians help patients learn and how well patient learning evolves not only into behavior change, but into high-impact learning for deeper understanding of one's condition. Human nature forms the foundation for the various ways in which we all learn. As admirable as the goal of personalized medicine may be (how many of us feel like strangers as we are treated by doctors whom we have been seeing for years?), its success is dependent on how well people can learn, especially in their adult years, far removed from traditional education.