A Primer on Clinical Experience in Medicine

Mastery of quality health care and patient safety begins as soon as we open the hospital doors for the first time and start acquiring practical experience. The acquisition of such experience includes much more than the development of sensorimotor skills and basic knowledge of the sciences. It relies on effective reasoning, decision making, and communication shared by all health professionals, including physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and administrators.

A Primer on Clinical Experience in Medicine: Reasoning, Decision Making, and Communication in Health Sciences is about these essential skills. It describes how physicians and health professionals reason, make decisions, and practice medicine. Covering the basic considerations related to clinical and caregiver reasoning, it lays out a roadmap to help those new to health care as well as seasoned veterans overcome the complexities of working for the well-being of those who trust us with their physical, mental, and spiritual health.

The book provides a step-by-step breakdown of the reasoning process for clinical work and clinical care. It examines both general and medical ways of thinking, reasoning, argumentation, fact finding, and using evidence. Outlining the fundamentals of decision making, it integrates coverage of clinical reasoning, risk assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis in evidence-based medicine. It also:

• Describes how to evaluate the success (effectiveness and cure) and failure (error and harm) of clinical and community actions
• Considers communication with patients and outlines strategies, successes, failures, and possible remedies—including offices, bedside, intervention, and care settings
• Examines strategies, successes, failures, and possible remedies for communication with peers—including interpersonal communication, morning reports, rounds, and research gatherings

The book describes vehicles, opportunities, and environments for enhanced professional communication, including patient interviews, clinical case reports, and morning reports. It includes numerous examples that demonstrate the importance of sound reasoning, decision making, and communication and also considers future implications for research, management, planning, and evaluation.