Random Acts of Medicine

The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health

By: Anupam B. Jena, Christopher Worsham

Narrated by: Anupam B. Jena, Christopher Worsham

Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

Does timing, circumstance, or luck impact your health care? This groundbreaking book reveals the hidden side of medicine and how unexpected—but predictable—events can profoundly affect our health. • Is there ever a good time to have a heart attack? Why do kids born in the summer get diagnosed more often with A.D.H.D.? How are marathons harmful for your health, even when you're not running?

"Fantastically entertaining and deeply thought-provoking." —Emily Oster, New York Times bestselling author of The Family Firm, Cribsheet, and Expecting Better

"Random Acts of Medicine shows that the ingenious use of natural experiments can improve medicine and save lives." —Wall Street Journal

As a University of Chicago–trained economist and Harvard medical school professor and doctor, Anupam Jena is uniquely equipped to answer these questions. And as a critical care doctor at Massachusetts General who researches health care policy, Christopher Worsham confronts their impact on the hospital’s sickest patients. In this singular work of science and medicine, Jena and Worsham show us how medicine really works, and its effect on all of us.

Relying on ingeniously devised natural experiments—random events that unknowingly turn us into experimental subjects—Jena and Worsham do more than offer readers colorful stories. They help us see the way our health is shaped by forces invisible to the untrained eye. Is there ever a good time to have a heart attack? Do you choose the veteran doctor or the rookie?  Do you really need the surgery your doctor recommends? These questions are rife with significance; their impact can be life changing. Addressing them in a style that’s both animated and enlightening, Random Acts of Medicine empowers you to see past the white coat and find out what really makes medicine work—and how it could work better.

©2023 Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Random Acts of Medicine is my favorite kind of book: smart, entertaining, and full of surprises. The field of medicine has been slow to appreciate the immense power of natural experiments. Jena and Worsham are on a crusade to change that. Read this book, and you’ll be a believer." —Steven D. Levitt, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Freakonomics

"What a brilliant book! Random Acts of Medicine is science, but it is much more than that. It offers a set of profound lessons about learning, life, and health." —Cass R. Sunstein, New York Times bestselling co-author of Nudge and Noise

"Jena and Worsham are the Freakonomicists of the medical realm... [They] are serious researchers who skillfully navigate the world of medicine and natural experiments. Random Acts of Medicine follows the successful formula of popular-science authors like Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, and Emily Oster, combining relatable human stories, statistical exploration and scientific explanations. But don’t be fooled by the fun read; Random Acts of Medicine shows that the ingenious use of natural experiments can improve medicine and save lives." —Wall Street Journal

Outliers meets Why do Men Have Nipples

Not nearly as interesting as Outliers. Not nearly as inane as Why Do Men Have Nipples

Multiple narrators was distracting. One of the narrators was particularly cloying in their style. Both did way too much virtue signaling. Most of us do not have the high and mighty opinion of doctors that the authors do.

I only read this because Pater Attia referenced these guys in Outlive. Do yourself a favor and skip this one for Outlive.

Robust evidence but skewed to Ivy League researchers

The book is well written and gathered large evidence that used RCT, the gold standard. It showcases how economics works with health to improve lives. But the authors largely present evidence from researchers from ivy league universities leaving the readers believing that only ivy leagues researchers conduct health economics studies.

Podcast is much better

Content is mostly same as the Freakonomics MD podcast, which is great, but the narration and pacing here are just too slow and flat

Data nerd nirvana

If you love learning about heuristics and statistics in a field directly relatable to at least one sphere of everyone’s life, this is the book for you.

Loved the book, enjoy the show

Have read a lot of both medicine and statistics/data science books. This one stands out for the ingenuity of the underlying research. Also well told. Production value was great. Enjoyed it and enjoy the show.

Great book

Freakonomics but for medicine. I loved the focus on natural experiments and clever methods. Highly recommend.

Thought provoking, clever, and ingenious!

Will open your eyes to how the world around you connects to our health and well being. Researchers and healthcare professionals can learn a new way of asking and answering questions, and the general public will be flat out entertained. Can’t put this book down!

Wonderful but frightening insights into the US health care system

Why can’t we have better health care? Because no one does the analysis like this.
I don’t want to say we need more MD/Econ PhDs but we need someone to do the health care analysis, not just the bean-counting analysis.

Dull and tedious

Statisticians may appreciate this book but I gave up about a third of the way through. It is mainly a description of research studies that read as if a robot wrote the text. "437 of these patients had bad outcomes, compared with 379 of the other patients, a difference of x patients, or y%, and we did control for the fact that 54 of these patients were between 63 and 75 or had pre-existing cardiovascular issues..." OMG make it stop. And the conclusions are kind of self-evident: If you take an ambulance to the hospital but traffic is heavy due to the Boston Marathon being run that day, your outcome will be worse than if the roads were not as busy. If you happen to get an ER doc who routinely prescribes opioids, you have a greater chance of ODing at some point in the future than if you got a doc who doesn't prescribe opioids. I definitely regret wasting a credit on this book.