MEDICAL THINKING by Steven Schwartz, Photographer Timothy Griffin ( 9780387963150 )

Item Details

Title:

MEDICAL THINKING
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MEDICAL JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING

By:

Steven Schwartz, Photographer Timothy Griffin

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£72.00
We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for further information.

ISBN 10:

0387963154

ISBN 13:

9780387963150

Publisher:

SPRINGER-VERLAG NEW YORK INC.

Pub. date:

10 October, 1986

Edition:

1986 ed.

Series:

Springer Series on Environmental Management

Synopsis:

Decision making is the physician's major activity. Every day, in doctors' offices throughout the world, patients describe their symptoms and com plaints while doctors perform examinations, order tests, and, on the basis of these data, decide what is wrong and what should be done. Although the process may appear routine-even to the physicians in volved-each step in the sequence requires skilled clinical judgment. Physicians must decide: which symptoms are important, whether any laboratory tests should be done, how the various items of clinical data should be combined, and, finally, which of several treatments (including doing nothing) is indicated. Although much of the information used in clinical decision making is objective, the physician's values (a belief that pain relief is more important than potential addiction to pain-killing drugs, for example) and subjectivity are as much a part of the clinical process as the objective findings of laboratory tests. In recent years, both physicians and psychologists have come to realize that patient management decisions are not only subjective but also prob abilistic (although this is not always acknowledged overtly). When doc tors argue that an operation is fairly safe because it has a mortality rate of only 1 %, they are at least implicitly admitting that the outcome of their decision is based on probability."

Illustrations:

bibliography

Publication:

Imprint:

Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Returns:

Returnable

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