Talking with Patients by Eric J Cassell

Talking with Patients by Eric J Cassell

Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool in medicine, and, according to Dr. Cassell, we must be as precise with it as a surgeon with a scalpel. In these two volumes, he analyzes doctor-patient communication and shows how doctors can use language for the maximum benefit of their patients. Throughout, Dr. Cassell stresses that patients are complex, changing, psychological, social and physical beings whose illnesses are well represented by their own communication. He proposes that both listening and speaking are arts that can be learned best when they are based on the way that spoken language functions in medicine.

Accordingly, Volume I focuses on the workings of spoken language in the clinical setting. It analyzes such important aspects of speech as paralanguage (non-word phenomenon like pause, pitch, and speech rate), how patients describe themselves and their illnesses, the logic of conversation, and the levels of meanings of words.

Volume II is a practical, detailed, how to guide that demonstrates the process of history taking and how the doctor can learn the most from the information that the patient has to offer. His arguments are amply illustrated in both volumes by transcripts of real interactions between patients and their doctors.

Eric J. Cassell is an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, as well as Emeritus Professor of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at McGill University. He retired from the active practice of internal medicine in 1998, after thirty-seven
years. Cassell is the author of The Healer's Art, The Place of the Humanities in Medicine, Changing Values in Medicine, two volumes on doctor-patient communication entitled Talking with Patients, Doctoring: The Nature of Primary Care Medicine, and The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine,
now in its second edition. Cassell is also Fellow of the Hastings Center, Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and Master of the American College of Physicians.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262530552
ISBN 10	0262530554
Title	Talking with Patients
Author	Eric J Cassell
Series	Talking With Patients
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	1985-03-27
Number of pages	223
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.