A guide for everyone involved in medical decision making to plot a clear course through complex and conflicting benefits and risks.

Medical Decision Making provides clinicians with a powerful framework for helping patients make decisions that increase the likelihood that they will have the outcomes that are most consistent with their preferences. This new edition provides a thorough understanding of the key decision making infrastructure of clinical practice and explains the principles of medical decision making both for individual patients and the wider health care arena. It shows how to make the best clinical decisions based on the available evidence and how to use clinical guidelines and decision support systems in electronic medical records to shape practice guidelines and policies. Medical Decision Making is a valuable resource for all experienced and learning clinicians who wish to fully understand and apply decision modelling, enhance their practice and improve patient outcomes. “There is little doubt that in the future many clinical analyses will be based on the methods described in Medical Decision Making, and the book provides a basis for a critical appraisal of such policies.” - Jerome P. Kassirer M.D., Distinguished Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine, US and Visiting Professor, Stanford Medical School, US

This popular reference facilitates diagnostic and therapeutic decision making for a wide range of common and often complex problems faced in outpatient and inpatient medicine. Comprehensive algorithmic decision trees guide you through more than 245 disorders organized by sign, symptom, problem, or laboratory abnormality. The brief text accompanying each algorithm explains the key steps of the decision making process, giving you the clear, clinical guidelines you need to successfully manage even your toughest cases. An algorithmic format makes it easy to apply the practical, decision-making approaches used by seasoned clinicians in daily practice. Comprehensive coverage of general and internal medicine helps you successfully diagnose and manage a full range of diseases and disorders related to women's health, emergency medicine, urology, behavioral medicine, pharmacology, and much more. A Table of Contents arranged by organ system helps you to quickly and easily zero in on the information you need. More than a dozen new topics focus on the key diseases and disorders encountered in daily practice. Fully updated decision trees guide you through the latest diagnostic and management guidelines.

This comprehensive reference delves into the complex process of medical decision making—both the nuts-and-bolts access and insurance issues that guide choices and the cognitive and affective factors that can make patients decide against their best interests. Wide-ranging coverage offers a robust evidence base for understanding decision making across the lifespan, among family members, in the context of evolving healthcare systems, and in the face of life-changing diagnosis. The section on applied decision making reviews the effectiveness of decision-making tools in healthcare, featuring real-world examples and guidelines for tailored communications with patients. Throughout, contributors spotlight the practical importance of the field and the pressing need to strengthen health decision-making skills on both sides of the clinician/client dyad. Among the Handbook’s topics: From laboratory to clinic and back: connecting neuroeconomic and clinical mea sures of decision-making dysfunctions. Strategies to promote the maintenance of behavior change: moving from theoretical principles to practices. Shared decision making and the patient-provider relationship. Overcoming the many pitfalls of communicating risk. Evidence-based medicine and decision-making policy. The internet, social media, and health decision making. The Handbook of Health Decision Science will interest a wide span of professionals, among them health and clinical psychologists, behavioral researchers, health policymakers, and sociologists.

Based on careful analysis of burden of disease and the costs ofinterventions, this second edition of 'Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition' highlights achievable priorities; measures progresstoward providing efficient, equitable care; promotes cost-effectiveinterventions to targeted populations; and encourages integrated effortsto optimize health. Nearly 500 experts - scientists, epidemiologists, health economists,academicians, and public health practitioners - from around the worldcontributed to the data sources and methodologies, and identifiedchallenges and priorities, resulting in this integrated, comprehensivereference volume on the state of health in developing countries.

The idea of person-centred health systems is widely advocated in political and policy declarations to better address health system challenges. A person-centred approach is advocated on political, ethical and instrumental grounds and believed to benefit service users, health professionals and the health system more broadly. However, there is continuing debate about the strategies that are available and effective to promote and implement 'person-centred' approaches. This book brings together the world's leading experts in the field to present the evidence base and analyse current challenges and issues. It examines 'person-centredness' from the different roles people take in health systems, as individual service users, care managers, taxpayers or active citizens. The evidence presented will not only provide invaluable policy advice to practitioners and policymakers working on the design and implementation of person-centred health systems but will also be an excellent resource for academics and graduate students researching health systems in Europe. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Describes Bayesian inference, Monte Carlo simulation, utility theory and gives case studies of their use.