Patient-Centred Medicine in Transition

The recent history of medicine is one of great biological and technological advances. Diagnoses are being made earlier, diseases caught sooner, patients living longer. And yet there is one area that lags behind the rest of the field: despite the efforts of graduate courses and training manuals, too many doctors still find communication a challenge.

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.

-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