Author: Al B. Weir
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 031087419X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
When the diagnosis is serious, what makes the difference between hope and despair?As a practicing oncologist, Dr. Al Weir works daily with patients who receive bad news. A medical doctor with a pastor’s heart, Dr. Weir knows from experience that it’s the patient’s focus, not the diagnosis, that indicates whether one will slip into despair and hopelessness or have the courage to live each day fully. Resilience of spirit can powerfully influence recovery and healing, and within our crisis, the choices we make are important. When Your Doctor Has Bad News offers no easy answers, no quick outs. But it does equip you to weather the storm you are facing and emerge whole again. Practical tips provide questions for you to ask your doctor and choices you can make to achieve your best chances for healing. Real-life stories show how others have coped with life-threatening illness, walked with God, and won. You can deepen communion with God in the midst of medical crisis. When Your Doctor Has Bad News gives you proven principles that will enable you to choose a life worth living, no matter what news the doctor has given you. “Dr. Weir . . . guides the reader—especially the one who has received bad news—past the soul-numbing shock of a dismal medical report. He reminds us of the soothing comfort available in the Word of God, of the heartwarming precepts upon which we can build a new life, and of the simple steps a family can take to promote hope and healing.”—Joni Eareckson Tada (from the introduction)
Author: Robert Buckman
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487592639
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
For many health care professionals and social service providers, the hardest part of the job is breaking bad news. The news may be about a condition that is life-threatening (such as cancer or AIDS), disabling (such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis), or embarrassing (such as genital herpes). To date medical education has done little to train practitioners in coping with such situations. With this guide Robert Buckman and Yvonne Kason provide help. Using plain, intelligible language they outline the basic principles of breaking bad new and present a technique, or protocol, that can be easily learned. It draws on listening and interviewing skills that consider such factors as how much the patient knows and/or wants to know; how to identify the patient's agenda and understanding, and how to respond to his or her feelings about the information. They also discuss reactions of family and friends and of other members of the health care team. Based on Buckman's award-winning training videos and Kason's courses on interviewing skills for medical students, this volume is an indispensable aid for doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, social workers, and all those in related fields.
Author: Danielle Ofri, MD
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807037885
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Medical mistakes are more pervasive than we think. How can we improve outcomes? An acclaimed MD’s rich stories and research explore patient safety. Patients enter the medical system with faith that they will receive the best care possible, so when things go wrong, it’s a profound and painful breach. Medical science has made enormous strides in decreasing mortality and suffering, but there’s no doubt that treatment can also cause harm, a significant portion of which is preventable. In When We Do Harm, practicing physician and acclaimed author Danielle Ofri places the issues of medical error and patient safety front and center in our national healthcare conversation. Drawing on current research, professional experience, and extensive interviews with nurses, physicians, administrators, researchers, patients, and families, Dr. Ofri explores the diagnostic, systemic, and cognitive causes of medical error. She advocates for strategic use of concrete safety interventions such as checklists and improvements to the electronic medical record, but focuses on the full-scale cultural and cognitive shifts required to make a meaningful dent in medical error. Woven throughout the book are the powerfully human stories that Dr. Ofri is renowned for. The errors she dissects range from the hardly noticeable missteps to the harrowing medical cataclysms. While our healthcare system is—and always will be—imperfect, Dr. Ofri argues that it is possible to minimize preventable harms, and that this should be the galvanizing issue of current medical discourse.
Author: Danielle Ofri, MD
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807073334
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
“A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician” that explores the doctor-patient relationship, the flaws in our health care system, and how doctors’ emotions impact medical care (Boston Globe) While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care. Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. Ofri also reveals that doctors cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.
Author: Les Irwig
Publisher: Judy Irwig
ISBN: 1905140177
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Every day we make decisions about our health - some big and some small. What we eat, how we live and even where we live can affect our health. But how can we be sure that the advice we are given about these important matters is right for us? This book will provide you with the right tools for assessing health advice.
Author: Jessie Gruman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802715028
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
Furnishes an insightful guide to the personal and medical choices that patients and their families must make following a life-threatening diagnosis, offering compassionate advice on how to respond to the crisis, from making informed decisions about treatment, to navigating the health-care maze, to sources of support and comfort. Original. 40,000 first printing.
Author: Steven Pantilat
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
ISBN: 0738219541
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
A renowned expert in palliative care, who is featured in the Netflix documentary, End Game, Dr. Pantilat delivers a compassionate and sensitive guide to living well with serious illness. In Life After the Diagnosis, Dr. Steven Z. Pantilat, a renowned international expert in palliative care demystifies the medical system for patients and their families. He makes sense of what doctors say, what they actually mean, and how to get the best information to help make the best medical decisions. Dr. Pantilat covers everything from the first steps after the diagnosis and finding the right caregiving and support, to planning your future so your loved ones don't have to. He offers advice on how to tackle the most difficult treatment decisions and discussions and shows readers how to choose treatments that help more than they hurt, stay consistent with their values and personal goals, and live as well as possible for as long as possible.
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309377722
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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Book Description
Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.
Author: Damon Tweedy, M.D.
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250044642
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK SELECTION • A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE BOOK SELECTION One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans When Damon Tweedy begins medical school,he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites." Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
Author: Peter Kaye
Publisher: Scion Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1914961293
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 62
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Book Description
Breaking Bad News provides practical guidance on the key principles needed to create a framework for discussions with the patient Key Features: Concise, practical guide Features a simple 10 step approach Clear explanations with key phrases for you to use For doctors, students and healthcare professionals The ability to impart bad news well is an important skill for all doctors and many healthcare professionals. But it is perceived as a particularly stressful part of the job, even though it is a skill that can easily be understood and practised. When handled well it can significantly enhance the relationship with the patient and their relatives. 10 Simple Steps The principles are presented as 10 simple steps which emphasise that the process of breaking bad news is a negotiation with the patient to ensure that you provide them with the correct level of information they need at that time. The steps also encourage the patient to talk and think about their situation. Each of the steps is clearly explained and sample questions and key phrases are provided to help you navigate these discussions effectively and with compassion. If you learn to ask questions of the patient first and then elicit their concerns, you will help them and you will gain their trust.
