Description
Book SynopsisClinical medicine, as a thinking discipline, is concerned not only with what clinicians do, but why. When physicians act in medicine they have some purpose or goal in mind. What they actually do and how they go about it is in the service of their purposes and their goals. Such goals cover a wide range of topics centering on patients, the doctor-patient relationship, the acts of doctoring patients, and the goals involved in being a physician among other physicians working within the institutions of medicine.The Nature of Clinical Medicine takes its direction from a catalog of goals of medicine that range from the expected diagnosis and treatment of diseases to wider concerns for patients, for physicians, and for medicine itself. The chapters are specific in teaching the kinds of knowledge that clinicians require in order to be able to achieve these goals. The central focus of the clinician and of this book is the patient. According to Eric Cassell, everything else, including the disease
Trade ReviewReading Eric Cassells latest contribution to the medical humanities The Nature of Clinical Medicine is like sipping a fine glass of claret. It requires slow savoring in order to benefit fully from the insights that Dr. Cassell has distilled over a professional lifetime of clinical practice and careful reflection. Cassells book is full of deep insights and human wisdom borne from his rewarding career of treating and caring deeply for patients. * Hillel D. Braune, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2015) *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter 1. The Goals of Medicine ; Chapter 2. A Story about a Patient with Aortic Stenosis ; Chapter 3. What are Facts in Medicine? ; Chapter 4. Clarify the Chain of Events that Led to the Present State: The Case as a Narrative ; Chapter 5. The Case of Myra Manner ; Chapter 6. Examine Your Presuppositions and Preconceptions ; Chapter 7. Separate and Examine the Values at Issue ; Chapter 8. A Question of Judgment ; Chapter 9. The Patient, the Doctor, And the Relationship ; Chapter 10. Observation, Prognosis, and Prognosticating ; Chapter 11. Thinking in Medicine ; Chapter 12. Accepting the Challenge
