Clinical professionalism is a set of values, behaviours and relationships which underpins the public’s trust in healthcare providers both as individuals and organisations. ‘First, do no harm’ is expressed most clearly today in the patient safety movement and the imperative for transparency and candour in the delivery of healthcare. Professional conduct is essential for safe and high quality clinical care. The ABC of Clinical Professionalism considers recent evidence on how healthcare practitioners maintain professionalism including how values are developed and affected by the working environment, the challenges of maintaining personal and organisational resilience and the ethical and regulatory framework in which practice is conducted. Topics covered include: Acquiring and developing professional values Patient-centred care Burnout and resilience Confidentiality and social media The culture of healthcare Ensuring patient safety Leadership and collaboration Ethical and legal aspects of professionalism Teaching and assessing professionalism Regulation of healthcare professionals The chapter authors come from a range of countries and have experience of working in multidisciplinary clinical teams, research, and in the training of future healthcare practitioners including their development as professionals.
This is a vital text to help you with the competency assessment in the UK Foundation Programme giving practical advice in an easy to follow format. It advises new doctors on note-keeping, time management/organisation, communicating with colleagues, the structure of the NHS, and how to deal with the ethical and legal issues they face when on-call. Also looks at emotional intelligence, learning styles or how different personality types can work together more effectively.
What you really need to know, but no one told you. The Essential Guide to Acute Care contains everything you really need to know about acute care that you can’t find in a standard textbook and have probably never been taught before. Starting with the concept of patients at risk, the Essential Guide to Acute Care explains how to recognise and manage the generic altered physiology that accompanies acute illness. The principles of acute care are explained simply yet comprehensively. Throughout the book ‘mini-tutorials’ expand on the latest thinking or controversies, and practical case histories reinforce learning at the end of each chapter. The chapters are designed to be read by individuals or used for group tutorials in acute care. Extensively rewritten and updated, this second edition is essential reading for anyone who looks after acutely ill adults, including: Foundation Programme trainees and trainers Trainees in medicine, surgery, anaesthesia and emergency medicine Final year medical students Nursing staff and allied professionals working in critical care
The world of postgraduate medical education is changing, and educational supervisors need the knowledge and skills to be able to do their job effectively. Many of those who want to do this job well feel unprepared for the task. Essential Guide to Educational Supervision is a handbook for educational supervisors everywhere. The topics covered are generic to medical education, whatever the specialty. Although the focus is on postgraduate medical education, many of the topics in this book are also applicable to undergraduates. Essential Guide to Educational Supervision is written for: Consultants and General Practitioners who work with trainees Educational supervisors People who organise postgraduate training programmes Written by experts in their field, each chapter gives an overview of key topics in educational supervision with references and further resources. The book provides evidence and theory when applicable, but is deliberately practical, with case studies and tips for good practice as well.
In the evaluation of healthcare, rigorous methods of quantitative assessment are necessary to establish interventions that are both effective and cost-effective. Usually a single study will not fully address these issues and it is desirable to synthesize evidence from multiple sources. This book aims to provide a practical guide to evidence synthesis for the purpose of decision making, starting with a simple single parameter model, where all studies estimate the same quantity (pairwise meta-analysis) and progressing to more complex multi-parameter structures (including meta-regression, mixed treatment comparisons, Markov models of disease progression, and epidemiology models). A comprehensive, coherent framework is adopted and estimated using Bayesian methods. Key features: A coherent approach to evidence synthesis from multiple sources. Focus is given to Bayesian methods for evidence synthesis that can be integrated within cost-effectiveness analyses in a probabilistic framework using Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. Provides methods to statistically combine evidence from a range of evidence structures. Emphasizes the importance of model critique and checking for evidence consistency. Presents numerous worked examples, exercises and solutions drawn from a variety of medical disciplines throughout the book. WinBUGS code is provided for all examples. Evidence Synthesis for Decision Making in Healthcare is intended for health economists, decision modelers, statisticians and others involved in evidence synthesis, health technology assessment, and economic evaluation of health technologies.
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. Topics covered include: The consultation Clinical communication and personality type Shared decision making Communication in clinical teams Communication in medical records Communication in specific situations, including mental health and end of life Teaching clinical communication The chapter authors are clinicians involved in communicating with patients, research and training healthcare professionals of the future. This team reflects the multidisciplinary approach required to develop effective clinical communication.
Being a good clinician is not just about knowledge – how doctors and other healthcare professionals think, reason and make decisions is arguably their most critical skill. While medical schools and postgraduate training programmes teach and assess the knowledge and skills required to practice as a doctor, few offer comprehensive training in clinical reasoning or decision making. This is important because studies suggest that diagnostic error is common and results in significant harm to patients – and errors in reasoning account for the majority of diagnostic errors. The ABC of Clinical Reasoning covers core elements of the thinking and decision making associated with clinical practice – from what clinical reasoning is, what it involves and how to teach it. Informed by the latest advances in cognitive psychology, education and studies of expertise, the ABC covers: Evidence-based history and examination Use and interpretation of diagnostic tests How doctors think – models of clinical reasoning Cognitive and affective biases Metacognition and cognitive de-biasing strategies Patient-centred evidence based medicine Teaching clinical reasoning From an international team of authors, the ABC of Clinical Reasoning is essential reading for all students, medical professionals and other clinicians involved in diagnosis, in order to improve their decision-making skills and provide better patient care.
Demographic trends confirm what clinicians already know – they are spending increasing amounts of time dealing with older people. This new ABC provides an introduction to the new and increasing challenges of treating older patients in a variety of settings. ABC of Geriatric Medicine provides an overview of geriatric medicine in practice. Chapters are written by experts, and are based on the specialty geriatric medicine curriculum in the UK. ABC of Geriatric Medicine is a highly illustrated, informative, and practical source of knowledge, with links to further information and resources. It is an essential guide where management of the ageing population is a major health issue – for hospital and family doctors, students, nurses and other members of the multi-disciplinary team.