Patient-Centred Medicine in Transition

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.

Challenges all previous models of communication between patients and doctors

-Foreword.- Introduction.- Communication hypocompetence--an iatrogenic epidemic.- Democracy in medicine.- Patient-centeredness without a center.- How doctors think can be judged from how they listen and speak.- A new wave of patient-centeredness.- Models of patient-centered care.- What is meant by 'empathy'?.- Gender matters in medical education.- Working and learning in 'teams' in a new era of health care.- Theorizing team process through cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT): networking and knotworking.- Theorizing team process through a Foucauldian perspective: gaining a voice in team activity at the clinical coalface.- Theorizing team process through actor-network-theory (ANT): communication practice as a theory in action.- Theorizing team process through Deleuzean rhizomatics: becoming a medical professional in nomadic teams.- Team process and complexity theory: blunting Occam's Razor.- Building a collaborative community in medical education research.- Conclusion: professing medical identities in the liquid world of teams. - Bibliography.- Index

Challenging previous models of communication between patients and doctors, this publication explains how making it a broader, team-focused, non-technical encounter can improve patient outcomes as well as increase patient safely in clinical settings.