A recent publication from JAMA’s Archives of Internal Medicine shows that male physicians of a certain age are significantly more likely to order prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening deemed inappropriate. The author’s theory as to the mechanism at work?
This study elucidates several important provider-level determinants of PSA screening misuse and substantiates that PSA screening is frequently performed counter to evidence-based guidelines. Further work is needed to determine the degree to which “prostatempathy” contributes to PSA misuse by older male providers.
One could go into a diatribe about how the “e” at the end of “prostate” is silent, making “prostatempathy” sound the exact same as “prostate empathy” when pronounced…but that might not be a productive use of one’s time, which would be somewhat ironic, given that that article focuses specifically on productive use of one’s time. Right then…
More from the abstract…