If medicine is so great, why are more people getting sick? Why don't people turn up for follow-up checks or take their pills properly? And why do patients sometimes seem to come from another planet?Medicine doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens between doctors and patients, who seem to inhabit very different worlds. It's not enough to think about medicine. We need to think more about patients. Thinking About Patients promotes a multidimensional model of medicine. It offers a practical guide to the psychological and social processes involved in practising medicine and in being a patient. It will help us to return to what medicine is all about - using our skills to serve patients.

If medicine is so great, why are people getting sick? Why don’t people turn up for follow-up checks or take their pills properly? And why do patients sometimes seem to come from another planet? Medicine doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens between doctors and patients, who seem to inhabit very different worlds. It’s not enough to think about medicine. We need to think more about patients. Originally published in 2001 and reissued here with a new preface, Thinking About Patients promotes a multidimensional model of medicine. It offers a practical guide to the psychological and social processes involved in practicing medicine and in being a patient. It will help us to return to what medicine is all about – using our skills to serve patients.

If medicine is so great, why are more people getting sick? Why don't people turn up for follow-up checks or take their pills properly? And why do patients sometimes seem to come from another planet?Medicine doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens between doctors and patients, who seem to inhabit very different worlds. It's not enough to think about

Physicians enter their professions with the highest of hopes and ideals for compassionate and efficient patient care. Along the way, however, recurring problems arise in their interactions with some patients that lead physicians to label them as "difficult." Some studies indicate that physicians identify 15% or more of their patients as "difficult." The negative feelings that physicians have toward these patients may lead to frustration, cynicism. and burnout. Changing How We Think about Difficult Patients uses a multi-tiered approach to bring awareness to the difficult patient conundrum, then introduces simple, actionable tools that every physician, nurse, and caregiver can use to change their mindset about the patients who challenge them. Positive thoughts lead to more positive feelings and more effective treatments and results for patients. They also lead to more satisfaction and decreased feelings of burnout in healthcare professionals. How does this book give you an advantage? Caring for difficult patients poses a tremendous challenge for physicians, nurses, and clinical practitioners. It may contribute significantly to feelings of burnout, including feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and lost sense of purpose. In response, Dr. Naidorf offers a pragmatic approach to accepting patients the way they are, then provides strategies for providers to find more happiness and satisfaction in their interactions with even the most challenging patients and families. Here are just some of the topics the author discusses in detail: What Makes a "Good" Patient? The Four Core Ethical Principals of the Clinician-Patient Relationship The Four Models of the Physician-Patient Relationship What Challenges Anybody with Illness or Injury? How "Good" Patients Handle the Challenges of Illness and Injury Six Common Reactions to Illness and Hospitalization On "Taking Care of the Hateful Patient" Standards for Education in Medical Ethics De-escalation Strategies Cultural, Structural, and Language Issues Types of Patients Who Tend to Challenge Us The Think, Feel, Act Cycle Recognizing Our Preconceived Thoughts Three Common Thought Distortions About Patients Asking Useful Questions Getting Out of the Victim Mentality Guiding our Thoughts Through a Common Scenario Show Compassion, Feel Compassion If you're a healthcare provider or caregiver, Changing How We Think about Difficult Patients will give you the benefit of understanding your most challenging patients, and a roadmap to positively changing your mindset and actions to better deliver care and compassion for all.

Medicine courses across Australia are now recognising the need to teach communication skills and to focus on the patient-doctor relationship as the key to medical care. This book provides background on how the patient's perception of the doctor and the doctor's perception of the patient is formed.

This book challenges functional models for more aesthetic and ethical models, where communication is grounded in values systems of cultures. Here, communication is treated as a distributed phenomenon involving networks of persons, activities and artifacts, and extends beyond doctor-patient relationships to working in and across teams around patients. The purpose of the book is to stimulate thinking about how patient care and safety may be improved through a focus upon the ‘non-technical’ work of doctors – interpersonal communication, teamwork and situation awareness in teams. The focus is then not on the personality of the doctor, but on the dynamics of relationships which form doctors’ multiple identities.

How Patients Think is a refreshing look at the heart of healthcare¬--the patient. Dr. LaFountain discusses how improvements in health and wealth are constrained by outdated approaches to patient management. She presents a scientific basis for understanding the complexities of patient decision-making regarding one of the most crippling problems facing the healthcare industry today--patient disengagement. Dr. LaFountain argues that a radical change in how we approach patient and population management is in order if we are to see measurable impact on outcomes or costs of care. She provides a thorough review of how patient engagement can be approached using a scientific platform and presents case examples in diabetes, oncology and ADHD. Tools and techniques for developing evidence-based strategies are also provided.

On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can with our help avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track.Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country's best doctors, and his own experience as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his debilitating medical problems.How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.

Critical Thinking in the Medical-Surgical Unit: Skills to Assess, Analyze, and Act, Second Edition Shelley Cohen, RN, BSN, CEN Give your nurses the confidence and skills they need to think independently and display high levels of clinical judgment. Critical Thinking in the Medical-Surgical Unit is filled with resources and assessment tools, usable by both new and experienced nurses, to build a culture of critical thinking directed toward the best interests of the patient. This must-have book will help you: Explain the principles of critical thinking Provide strategies for coaching new graduates Discuss creating and teaching critical thinking classes, from orientation to ongoing nurse development Discuss the important role played by preceptors during orientation of new employees and give strategies for encouraging critical thinking skills Table of Contents: Chapter 1: Defining Critical Thinking Chapter 2: New Graduate Nurses and Critical Thinking Chapter 3: The Critical Thinking Classroom Chapter 4: Orientation: Bringing Critical Thinking to the Clinical Environment Chapter 5: Nursing Practice That Promotes and Motivates Critical Thinking Chapter 6: Novice to Expert: Setting Realistic Expectations for Critical Thinking Chapter 7: Applying Critical Thinking to Nursing Documentation Chapter 8: Relating Critical Thinking to Its Higher Purpose Appendix: Additional Tools Unfolding teaching scenarios for medical-surgical nurses Medical-surgical unit teachable moments Critical thinking skills and geriatric patients Sample agenda Instructor worksheet--connecting words to spark critical thinking Worksheet--relationship to critical thinking Worksheet--vital signs Worksheet--red flag alerts Worksheet--relating nursing care to critical thinking