While medical language is soaked in metaphor, medicine – that is, medical culture, clinical practice, and medical education – outwardly rejects metaphor for objective, literal scientific language. Arguing that this is a misstep, this book critically considers what embracing the use of metaphors, similes and aphorisms might mean for shaping medical culture, and especially the doctor-patient relationship, in a healthy way. It demonstrates how the landscape of medicine may be reshaped through metaphor shift and is an important work for all those interested in the use of language in medicine.

Decision making is the physician's major activity. Every day, in doctors' offices throughout the world, patients describe their symptoms and com plaints while doctors perform examinations, order tests, and, on the basis of these data, decide what is wrong and what should be done. Although the process may appear routine-even to the physicians in volved-each step in the sequence requires skilled clinical judgment. Physicians must decide: which symptoms are important, whether any laboratory tests should be done, how the various items of clinical data should be combined, and, finally, which of several treatments (including doing nothing) is indicated. Although much of the information used in clinical decision making is objective, the physician's values (a belief that pain relief is more important than potential addiction to pain-killing drugs, for example) and subjectivity are as much a part of the clinical process as the objective findings of laboratory tests. In recent years, both physicians and psychologists have come to realize that patient management decisions are not only subjective but also prob abilistic (although this is not always acknowledged overtly). When doc tors argue that an operation is fairly safe because it has a mortality rate of only 1 %, they are at least implicitly admitting that the outcome of their decision is based on probability.

Explores how Vicious Cycle Disorders (VCD) can be identified and eliminated with a Matrix Assessment Profile (MAP).

Mastery of quality health care and patient safety begins as soon as we open the hospital doors for the first time and start acquiring practical experience. The acquisition of such experience includes much more than the development of sensorimotor skills and basic knowledge of sciences. It relies on effective reason, decision making, and communication shared by all health professionals, including physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and administrators. How to Think in Medicine, Reasoning, Decision Making, and Communications in Health Sciences is about these essential skills. It describes how physicians and health professionals reason, make decision, and practice medicine. Covering the basic considerations related to clinical and caregiver reasoning, it lays out a roadmap to help those new to health care as well as seasoned veterans overcome the complexities of working for the well-being of those who trust us with their physical and mental health. This book provides a step-by-step breakdown of the reasoning process for clinical work and clinical care. It examines both the general and medical ways of thinking, reasoning, argumentation, fact finding, and using evidence. It explores the principles of formal logic as applied to clinical problems and the use of evidence in logical reasoning. In addition to outline the fundamentals of decision making, it integrates coverage of clinical reasoning risk assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis in evidence-based medicine. Presented in four sections, this book discusses the history and position of the problem and the challenge of medical thinking; provides the philosophy interfacing topics of interest for health sciences professionals including the probabilities, uncertainties, risks, and other quantifications in health by steps of clinical work; decision making in clinical and community health care, research, and practice; Communication in clinical and community care including how to write medical articles, clinical case studies and case reporting, and oral and written communication in clinical and community practice and care.

"Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science, but rather an interpretive practice that relies heavily on clinical reasoning." "In How Doctors Think, Kathryn Montgomery contends that assuming medicine is strictly a science can have adverse effects. She suggests these can be significantly reduced by recognizing the vital role of clinical judgment."--BOOK JACKET.

A creature of Jewish mythology, a golem is an animated being made by man from clay and water who knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his ignorance. Like science and technology, the subjects of Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's previous volumes, medicine is also a golem, and this Dr. Golem should not be blamed for its mistakes - they ...

Brought together from various fields of medicine, our team of visionary physicians come together with the shared mission of guiding our current generation of frustrated physicians to finding a path in medicine that is aligned with their ideal lifestyle vision.Who are our authors?From Emergency Medicine, to Obstetrics and Gynecology, to Radiation Oncology, to Psychiatry to Psychology, to Beauty Queens with combined Law and Medical Doctorates we've brought our best docs together. We've brought you medical school professors, entrepreneurs, publishers, locum tenens practitioners, doctors who entirely quit medicine to build virtual worlds, doctors who left the world of traditional practice to do missionary work.They've all come together to share with you their experiences during medical training, their careers and lives after medical training out in the real world, and the feelings and thoughts that called them to consider alternatives to medicine.