The heroes of William Shakespeare's plays--Hamlet, Juliet, Othello, and Falstaff--attempt to overcome his villains--Richard III, Lady Macbeth, and Iago--in order to find and kill the reclusive wizard William Shakesepeare and take his magic quill.

Roughly half of all deaths in the United States are linked to behavioral and social factors. The leading causes of preventable death and disease in the United States are smoking, sedentary lifestyle, along with poor dietary habits, and alcohol consumption. To make measurable improvements in the health of Americans, physicians must be equipped with the knowledge and skills from the behavioral and social sciences needed to recognize, understand, and effectively respond to patients as individuals, not just to their symptoms. What are medical schools teaching students about the behavioral and social sciences? In the report, the committee concluded that there is inadequate information available to sufficiently describe behavioral and social science curriculum content, teaching techniques, and assessment methodologies in U.S. medical schools and recommends development of a new national behavioral and social science database. The committee also recommended that the National Board of Medical Examiners ensure that the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination adequately cover the behavioral and social science subject matter recommended in this report.

Health professionals’ interest in social and behavioral science is rapidly increasing due to the growing recognition that social factors such as income, education, race, gender, and age all impact individuals’ health. These and other social conditions also shape patients’ illness experiences, the ways that they interact with health care providers, and the effectiveness of with which health professionals provide care. Understanding these social determinants and applying them to clinical practice is a major challenge for healthcare providers, which is why programs and accrediting bodies have been including more social and behavioral science content into the curricula for medical, nursing, and allied health programs. Social and Behavioral Science for Health Professionals provides in-depth coverage of the social determinants of health and how to directly apply these insights in clinical practice, thereby enhancing clinicians’ ability to engage their patients and more effectively render care. Broken into four parts, the book opens with the foundations of social science and health, including the shifting landscape of health and healthcare. The authors then cover the way in which social determinants of health shape large-scale features of health and illness in society, how they influence interactions between patients and providers in clinical settings, and how they shape health care systems and policies. Threshold concepts in each chapterfocus on conceptual and transformative learning while learning objectives, activities, and discussion questions provide instructors and students with robust sets of learning aids that intentionally focus on practical clinical, epidemiological, and policy issues. Ideal for students, educators, and professionals in health care, medical sociology, public health, and related fields, Social and Behavioral Science for Health Professionals is the only introduction available that clearly articulates why social and behavioral science matter in clinical care. New to This Edition: New Chapter 13 on Comparative Health Care Systems covers four models of health care systems and expands the global focus of the book Greater emphasis on the LGBTQ+ community provides coverage of how gender expression and sexual orientation influence health and quality of care received New coverage of current issues such as the opioid crisis and vaccine hesitancy that have been rendered especially important by the COVID-19 pandemic Added discussion questions at the end of every chapter strengthen students’ critical thinking skills and abilities to apply new insights to practical, real-world examples.

Behavioral sciences for the next generation of health care providers – including practical features such as chapter review questions and an annotated practice exam. The fourth edition of The Behavioral Sciences and Health Care is an invaluable resource for those educating the next generation of physicians and other health care providers. This easy-to-use text presents succinct information about a wide variety of neurological, social, and psychological sciences from a unified perspective of the complex evolutionary processes of gene–individual–environmental interaction, breathing new life into the biopsychosocial model so essential to understanding human behavior. The book is organized in sections covering Regulatory Systems, Basic and Higher Order Homeostatic Systems, Development Through the Life Cycle, Social and Cultural Issues, Societal and Behavioral Health Challenges, The Health Care System, Policy, and Economics; The Clinical Relationship; and Psychopathology. In this edition,numerous chapters have been extensively revised to include the most up-to-date information and to integrate the DSM-5 classification. A new chapter deals with pain and a new appendix on psychological testing has been added. Each chapter begins with guidance questions and ends with current recommended readings, resources, and review questions. A complete 335 question-and-answer multiple choice USMLE-type exam section not only allows readers to assess how well they have learned the material, but also highlights important points and adds additional specific information to supplement the text. This text is particularly suited for use in systems-based and casebased curricula that can be used creatively in flipped classrooms and other active learning environments. Accessible and clear, without oversimplification, the book facilitates interdisciplinary education, providing a common core of knowledge applicable in many fields, including medicine, nursing, psychology, and social work.

This book is the product of many years' experience teaching behavioral science in a way that demonstrates its relevance to clinical medicine. We have been guided by the reactions and evaluations of many first-year medical students. The result is a conceptual framework different from those that we and others had tried before. Because the clinical relevance of knowledge about human behavior is less apparent to many first-year students than that of the other traditional pre clinical courses, books and courses organized as brief introductions to psychology, sociology, and behavioral neurology have often been poorly received. Various medical schools and texts have explored ways to overcome this difficulty. One text organizes the presentation around very practical problems which are of unmistakable interest to the future physician: the therapeutic relationship, death and dying, sexuality, and pain, to give a few examples. Another emphasizes stages of development, periods of the human life cycle, as its organizing principle. Both of these approaches have merit and have been used successfully in various schools. They seem to us, however, to have a potentially serious shortcoming. They focus student attention too much on the more immediately intriguing issues of specific clinical problems or on the more easily recognized age specific behavioral issues. In the limited time available, the teaching of general principles of human behavioral functioning may then be neglected.