Narrative-Based Practice in Health and Social Care outlines a vision of how witnessing narratives, paying attention to them, and developing an ability to question them creatively, can make the person’s emerging story the central focus of health and social care, and of healing. This text gives an account of the practical application of ideas and skills from contemporary narrative studies to health and social care. Promoting narrative-based practice in everyday encounters with patients and clients, and in supervision, teaching, teamwork and management, it presents "Conversations Inviting Change," an established narrative-based model of interactional skills. Underpinned by an account of theory from narrative studies and related fields, including communication theory and systems thinking, it is written for students and practitioners across a broad range of professions in primary and secondary health care and social care. More information about "Conversations Inviting Change" is available at www.conversationsinvitingchange.com. This website includes podcasts, presentations and further teaching material as well as details of forthcoming courses, and is continually updated with information about the approach described in this book.

This book provides an important contribution to the new and growing field of ‘narrative-based medicine’. It specifically addresses the largest area of medical activity, primary care. It provides both a theoretical framework and practical skills for dealing with individual consultations, family work, clinical supervision and teamwork, and offers a comprehensive approach to the whole range of work in primary care. Using a wide range of clinical examples, it shows how professionals in primary care can help clarify patients’ existing stories, and elucidate new stories. It can be used as a training resource and includes exercises and summaries of key points to consider. It is based on, and describes, an established evaluated training method, and is of immediate and significant practical use to readers. It is essential reading for general practitioners, practice nurses and others in the primary care team, psychologists, family therapists, counsellors and other professionals attached to primary care. GP trainers, tutors and course organisers will find it a valuable educational tool. Professionals elsewhere in primary care such as pharmacists, dentists and optometrists, and academics in medical sociology and medical anthropology will also find it very useful.

Edited by two leading general practitioners and with contributions from over 20 authors, this book covers a wide range of topics to do with narrative in medicine. It includes a wealth of real examples of patients narratives and addresses theoretical and practical issues including the use of narrative as a therapeutic tool, teaching narrative to students, philosophical issues, narrative in legal and ethical decisions, narrative in nursing, and the narrative medical record.

This book assembles many of the foremost writers and clinicians in the field of team-based primary care to share their own relational reflections. It features narratives from fields such as integrated behavioral health, integrated primary care, primary care behavioral health, medical family therapy, health psychology, primary care psychology, and clinical social work. The key focus of the chapters are the relationships that are formed during primary care delivery. The book is organized into six core chapters: Family of Origin, Teachers and Mentors, Our Patients and Ourselves, Colleagues and Collaborators, Clinician as Patient, and Death and Loss. Each chapter contains a variety of styles and formats of narrative medicine, including personal reflections, story-telling, and poetry. Connections in the Clinic will be of interest to a wide audience of clinicians and educators dedicated to a reflective or story-telling approach to healing.

The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine articulates the ideas, methods, and practices of narrative medicine. Written by the originators of the field, this book provides the authoritative starting place for any clinicians or scholars committed to learning of and eventually teaching or practicing narrative medicine.

Narrative medicine emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. This book provides an introduction to the principles of narrative medicine and guidance for implementing narrative methods.

The Power of Colleagues What happens when primary care clinicians meet together on set aside time in their practice settings to talk about their own patients? .....Complimenting quality metrics or performance measures through discussing the actual stories of individual patients and their clinician-patient relationships In these settings, how can clinicians pool their collective experience and apply that to ‘the evidence’ for an individual patient? .....Especially for patients who do not fit the standard protocols and have vague and worrisome symptoms, poor response to treatment, unpredictable disease courses, and/or compromised abilities for shared decision making What follows when discussion about individual patients reveals system-wide service gaps and coordination limitations? .....Particularly for patients with complex clinical problems that fall outside performance monitors and quality screens How can collaborative engagement of case-based uncertainties with one’s colleagues help combat the loneliness and helplessness that PCPs can experience, no matter what model or setting in which they practice? .....And where they are expected to practice coordinated, evidence-based, EMR-directed care These questions inspired Lucia Sommers and John Launer and their international contributors to explore the power of colleagues in “Clinical Uncertainty in Primary Care: The Challenge of Collaborative Engagement” and offer antidotes to sub-optimal care that can result when clinicians go it alone. From the Foreword: “Lucia Sommers and John Launer, with the accompanying input of their contributing authors, have done a deeply insightful and close-to-exhaustive job of defining clinical uncertainty. They identify its origins, components and subtypes; demonstrate the ways in which and the extent to which it is intrinsic to medicine...and they present a cogent case for its special relationship to primary care practice...‘Clinical Uncertainty in Primary Care’ not only presents a model of collegial collaboration and support, it also implicitly legitimates it.’’ Renee Fox, Annenberg Professor Emerita of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania.

This book presents case-based descriptions of models for the inclusive, multispecialty and multidisciplinary clinical care of complex cases. Cases range from primary care patients with complex systemic medical and psychiatric comorbidity, to those requiring specialty care, to those with potentially terminal illnesses. While each category and case has its unique requirements often necessitating different models of care, the commonalities in approaching complex clinical situations is underscored. Extended case narratives written by the treating physicians, summarizing both the course of clinical care and physicians' reflections on the challenges of managing complex patients, comprise the bulk of the book. Five additional chapters on systems issues associated with care of complex patients, together with a chapter on end of life considerations, a narrative analysis of the physicians reflections about complex patients, and a concluding chapter are prominently included to anchor the case narratives. Written by experts in the field, these descriptions form unique models for assessing and treating complex cases. Integrated Care for Complex Patients is a useful guide for all health practitioners and health administrators who are responsible for clinically complex cases, including physicians in primary care and psychiatry, physician assistants and nurse practitioners, and psychologists.

Real-life primary care case studies* from more than 50 primary care providers, including physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and physicians! 101 Primary Care Case Studies offers real-life patient scenarios and critical thinking exercises to help you work through a patient’s chief complaint. Through narrative case studies, you will determine how best to diagnose, treat, and manage your patient based on the history of present illness, review of systems, relevant history, and physical examination findings. This workbook will ask probing questions to help you determine differential and most likely diagnoses, diagnostic tests to order, and appropriate patient management strategies using relevant and timely references to support your decisions. The organization of each case study simulates the patient care journey from chief complaint to outcome. Serving as a virtual clinical preceptor, this workbook can be used independently or in a classroom setting. It is accompanied by a robust online student supplement that provides answers to all questions, real outcomes of the cases, and valuable personal insights from the authors on how the patient was successfully managed. Not only will this workbook help you work through patient cases clinically, it will also share important, but often overlooked, bedside manner skills needed to successfully communicate with and care for your patients. Covering conditions across all organ systems and across the lifespan, this workbook is organized by chief complaint, providing an authentic perspective on what to expect in the patient care environment. It even includes information on pathophysiology and how to use ICD-10 and CPT (E/M) codes in your documentation. The book uniquely weaves together both the science and art of medicine by including personal insights into quality and compassionate care. Key Features Provides real-life patient cases from an interprofessional author team of physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and physicians Uses a templated case study design and critical thinking exercises to help you methodically work through various patient scenarios Teaches clinical and bedside manner skills imperative for delivering quality patient care Covers patients across the lifespan, including pediatric, adolescent, adult, and geriatric populations Offers additional insight on patient education, medical and legal concerns, and interprofessional collaboration Includes a robust online student supplement with valuable insights from the authors on how they successfully managed the cases Provides instructors with a table of contents that is filterable by chief complaint, diagnosis, patient population, and organ system *Details changed to protect patient information.

Empathy is essential to effectively engaging patients as partners in care. Clinicians’ empathy is increasingly understood as a professional competency, a mode and process of relating that can be learned and taught. Communication and empathy training are penetrating healthcare professions curricula as knowledge about the most effective modalities to train, maintain, and deepen empathy grows. This book draws on a wide range of contributors across many disciplines, and takes an evidence-based and longitudinal approach to clinical empathy education. It takes the reader on an engaging journey from understanding what empathy is (and how it can be measured), to approaches to empathy education informed by those understandings. It elaborates the benefits of embedding empathy training in graduate and post-graduate curricula and the importance of teaching empathy in accord with the clinician’s stage of professional development. Finally, it examines systemic perspectives on empathy and empathy education in the clinical setting, addressing issues such as equity, stigma, and law. Each section is full of the latest evidence-based research, including, notably, the advances that have been made over recent decades in the neurobiology of empathy. Perspectives among the interdisciplinary chapters include: Neurobiology of empathy Measuring empathy in healthcare Teaching clinicians about affect Teaching cultural humility: Understanding the core of others by reflecting on ours Empathy and implicit bias: Can empathy training improve equity? Teaching Empathy in Healthcare: Building a New Core Competency takes an innovative and comprehensive approach towards a developed understanding of empathy in the clinical context. This evidence-based book is set to become a classic text on the topic of empathy in healthcare settings, and will appeal to a broad readership of clinicians, educators, and researchers in clinical medicine, neuroscience, behavioral health, and the social sciences, leaders in educational and professional organizations, and anyone interested in the healthcare services they utilize.