This third edition of Essentials of Pain Medicine offers an accessible and concise, yet complete, overview of today's theory and practice of pain medicine and regional anesthesia. From a review of basic considerations through local anesthetics and nerve block techniques, this book provides the reader with an excellent tool for exam review or practice of Pain Management. Organized in a concise, practical quick-reference format. All chapters are brief and easy to read quickly. Offers specific strategies for the evaluation and management of a full range of pain syndromes, including cancer pain. Features over 230 diagrams, illustrations, summary charts and tables that clarify the information and make it easy to apply. Discusses the latest drugs and therapeutic approaches, such as acupuncture. Presents the management of pain for every setting where it is practiced, including the emergency room, the critical care unit, and the pain clinic. Includes new topics such as: imaging in pain medicine, radiation safety, issues associated with the use of narcotics, intraarticular and intraperitoneal use of opioids, pain management in the emergency room and in the intensive care unit, pain management issues during pregnancy, geriatric pain, and hospice care and end-of-life issues. New chapters on interventional procedures include discography, intradiscal electrothermal coagulation (IDET), vertebroplasty, and piriformis injections. Truncal blocks and neuraxial blocks and anticoagulants are added to the section on nerve blocks.

This book highlights concepts of professionalism in medicine such as ethical issues and both clinical and non-clinical challenges in patient care.

Responding to the public concern caused by recent hospital scandals and accounts of unintended harm to patients, this author draws on her experience of analysing the health care systems of over a dozen countries and examines whether greater regulation has increased patient safety and health care quality. The book adopts a new approach to mapping developments in health care systems in Europe, North America and Australia and pieces together evidence of which regulatory strategies and mechanisms work well to ensure safer patient care. It identifies the regulatory bodies, the regulatory principles and the implementation strategies adopted to improve governance in health care systems and suggests a conceptual framework for responsive regulation. The book will be of interest to government actors, health care professionals and medico-legal scholars.