Complexity In Healthcare And The Language Of Consultation

This book provides an important contribution to the new and growing field of 'narrative-based medicine'. It specifically addresses the largest area of medical activity primary care. It provides both a theoretical framework and practical skills for dealing with individual consultations family work clinical supervision and teamwork and offers a comprehensive approach to the whole range of work in primary care. Using a wide range of clinical examples it shows how professionals in primary care can help clarify patients' existing stories and elucidate new stories. It can be used as a training resource and includes exercises and summaries of key points to consider. It is based on and describes an established evaluated training method and is of immediate and significant practical use to readers. It is essential reading for general practitioners practice nurses and others in the primary care team psychologists family therapists counsellors and other professionals attached to primary care. GP trainers tutors and course organisers will find it a valuable educational tool. Professionals elsewhere in primary care such as pharmacists dentists and optometrists and academics in medical sociology and medical anthropology will also find it very useful.

This book is an introduction to health care as a complex adaptive system, a system that feeds back on itself. The first section introduces systems and complexity theory from a science, historical, epistemological, and technical perspective, describing the principles and mathematics. Subsequent sections build on the health applications of systems science theory, from human physiology to medical decision making, population health and health services research. The aim of the book is to introduce and expand on important population health issues from a systems and complexity perspective, highlight current research developments and their implications for health care delivery, consider their ethical implications, and to suggest directions for and potential pitfalls in the future.

The daily work of General Practitioners can seem at once simple and immensely complicated. The routine nature of the consultation appears on the surface to be straightforward, but carries within it myriad layers of meaning. The options for diagnosis and treatment within a single consultation, or when combined in the overall pattern of the day, can seem huge. A basic understanding of complexity theory can provide GPs with a way to face the more bewildering aspects of their job. This book provides a concise and clear introduction to complexity, tailored specifically for the primary care environment. GPs and their colleagues throughout primary care will find this book assists them in working more efficiently, more effectively and more enjoyably.

This book illustrates the relevance of chaos and complexity theory to healthcare organisations, public health, clinical governance and the consultation. It explains the terms and ideas at the heart of complexity, the unfamiliar science behind it, and how it applies to the real world. In healthcare, the NHS is a complex adaptive system. So are hospitals, general practices, diseases and patients. The book describes how insights from complexity can help us better understand how organisations, patients or disease develop over time, in an often unpredictable manner. Contributors set out the benefits of applying complexity to their own particular areas of healthcare. Complexity and Healthcare will be of special interest to clinicians and managers in primary and secondary care, researchers and academics, and in particular, general practitioners and public health professionals.

28 detailed cases explore the ethical reasoning, professional issues, and the emotional aspects of difficult consultations.

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.

This book aims to explain the foundations of the theory behind complexity, its place in clinical medicine and in the wider scientific context, using examples of its application in current medical scenarios.

The involvement of children and young people in consultations about aspects of their health or illness is often limited, with their role in diagnosis and decision-making on treatment options secondary to that of parents or carers. However, research shows that most children and young people want greater involvement, that this can both improve their understanding of their illness and positively influence healthcare outcomes. Policy recommendations increasingly require health professionals to involve children and young people in healthcare, but there is little available guidance on building the knowledge and skills needed to do so effectively. This book meets that need, including an overview of the particular issues involved and providing structured guidance for different types of consultations, including children with learning difficulties, disabled children and children as carers. Edited by eminent researchers, and with highly experienced contributors, this book is an invaluable resource for GPs and GP registrars, paediatric and emergency consultants and specialist registrars, nurses, paramedics, healthcare educators and trainees, and all those who work with children and young people in health-related contexts.

Information is vital for healthcare professionals striving to keep their practice current and based on the best available evidence. The Internet is playing an increasingly crucial role in life long learning of health professionals and is becoming the most practical way to access publications on clinical guidelines systematic reviews and for updating users about the key aspects of health policy. This book covers the diversity and variable value of material available on the Internet and takes a fresh approach to coping with information overload. It illustrates how simple techniques such as making and using smart maps concept maps and mind maps can help clinicians keep up-to-date and how these methods can be applied to particular areas of healthcare. It provides numerous case studies in key areas including mental health child health primary care and care of the elderly. Mapping Health on the Internet is essential reading for all healthcare professionals and will assist in their learning and continuing professional development.