Communication and Medical Practice: Social Relations in the Clinic Book

The importance of doctor-patient interaction in medical practice is well established and has become the focus of increasing interest through several different routes. `Patient-centred medicine' has become a new conventional wisdom in medical practice. Equally the power relations involved in doctor-patient interaction have been stressed again by Foucault and by recent feminist and critical work in medical sociology.@3David Silverman provides a comprehensively researched and analytically sensitive account of how doctors and patients in fact relate. Drawing on a wide range of original fieldwork from both the UK and elsewhere and from a variety of hospital settings, both privately and publicly funded, he demonstrates the complexity of medical interactions and the importance of their context. @3Among the key themes of the book are:} the way in which doctor-patient talk varies according to the trajectory of the patient's medical career and the method of payment for treatment} the implicit problems in paediatric medicine in negotiating between the rights and responsibilities of children and their parents} the difficulties intrinsic to reformist medical practice and patient-centred medicineRead More