Aimed at senior medical students and doctors in training, the key objective of this book is to help them become more competent in dealing with common areas of communication which many find particuarly difficult. The author covers the main areas where communication takes place and the difficult scenarios students/doctors are likely to encounter, providing practical (and alternative) guidelines to cover a broad range of situations.



Beginning with a review of basic communication skills, the text includes doctor/patient interchanges taken from the author's own work experience. These feature both good and bad examples of real communication and include alternative ways of handling difficult situations. Research is cited where appropriate, drawing on the body of research in medical communication. Each chapter ends with a brief summary and suggests questions for use in classrooms or self-study.