Clinical communication underpins safe patient care. The effective health professional sees illness through the patient's eyes and understands what matters most to him or her. Effectiveness means gathering hard clinical data about the physical changes affecting the patient, understanding why the patient is concerned, conveying this to other health care professionals and involving the patient at every stage of management decisions. The evidence for good clinical communication is well established, although there are challenges. While listening is the basis of sound diagnosis and clinical reasoning, its absence affects patient outcomes particularly when patients are not permitted to make their concerns known or when there are gaps in information flow or communication between the professionals caring for them. The ABC of Clinical Communication considers the evidence pertinent to individual encounters between patients and their health professionals, how to achieve efficient flow of information, the function of clinical teams and developing a teaching programme
As Head of Oncological Surgery and the Gynecology Clinic at Berlin's Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center, Jalid Sehouli is one of the world's leading cancer specialists. Every day, he experiences situations in which conversations take on a life-or-death significance. Delivering bad news is one of the most difficult tasks we face in life, especially for professionals such as doctors, police, or crisis intervention personnel, yet it is rarely touched on during training. Over the course of their career, a doctor will hold conversations with around 200,000 patients and their relatives that invariably involve delivering good or bad news. Either way, existential questions will arise, and the way the news is delivered is vital: recent studies show that it has a significant impact on patients' quality of life and the way they experience treatment. Mixing his wide-ranging professional experience with personal stories, Sehouli describes the emotions and perspectives of those who have to give and receive bad news from a broad perspective. His book can be helpful for anyone who has to deliver bad news--managers, friends, or parents.
Winner of the 2013 Human Rights Literature Award Medical oncologist Ranjana Srivastava contends that the best medicine begins with a good chat, to guide the decision-making of both doctors and patients. Increasingly, people are unable to properly comprehend the complex treatment choices on offer, or are self-diagnosing and demanding unnecessary or risky procedures. Doctors, in turn, feel unable to deny the requests of patients and their families. Narrow specialisation also means no-one is discussing the overall picture of a patient's health. Srivastava warns that people are suffering - even dying - as a result, and the medical profession should be taking responsibility. In a frank and clear-eyed assessment of an unacknowledged crisis, she makes an impassioned case for healthcare training to incorporate effective communication skills.
"Does IQ define our destiny? In his groundbreaking bestseller, Daniel Goleman argues that our view of human intelligence is far too narrow. It is not our IQ, but our emotional intelligence that plays a major role in thought, decision-making and individual success. Self-awareness, impulse control, persistence, motivation, empathy and social deftness: all are qualities that mark people who excel, whose relationships flourish, who can navigate difficult conversations, who become stars in the workplace. With new insights into the brain architecture underlying emotion and rationality, Goleman shows precisely how emotional intelligence can be nurtured and strengthened in all of us.
The definitive guide to motivational interviewing (MI) for health care practitioners has been completely revised to reflect important developments and make the approach even more accessible. When it comes to helping patients manage chronic and acute conditions and make healthier choices in such areas as medication adherence, smoking, diet, and preventive care, good advice alone is not enough. This indispensable book shows how to use MI techniques to transform conversations about change.
Critical Conversations in Healthcare, Second Edition by 
Establishing a Culture of Patient Safety by 
How to Present Negative Medical News in a Positive Light by 
New Horizons in Patient Safety: Safe Communication by