Dr. Terrie Wurzbacher is a retired Naval Officer and an Emergency Physician. She spent 29 1/2 years in the Navy and devoted much of her time trying to teach interns and medical students the fine "art" of communicating with patients. She does NOT claim to be an expert in that field but knows that once she realized that she was not getting the point across to her patients and began to concentrate on ways to help them understand, she was way ahead of most of her peers. There are great doctors out there and some of that greatness is based on technical skill. However, the majority of the great doctors are great because they make the patient a big part of the entire gameplan. Dr. Wurzbacher has always aspired to be that kind of doctor. She knows she's not great but hopes that patients will help their own doctors get to "great".

Perhaps a more important qualification for authoring materials about doctor-patient communication is that she's been a patient herself. Although she is very fortunate to have had excellent health, she has had to visit the doctor for several things and has had a sampling of pretty poor physicians and also wonderful ones. So, she does have the "credentials" to talk about doctor-patient communication.