Physicians enter their professions with the highest of hopes and ideals for compassionate and efficient patient care. Along the way, however, recurring problems arise in their interactions with some patients that lead physicians to label them as "difficult." Some studies indicate that physicians identify 15% or more of their patients as "difficult." The negative feelings that physicians have toward these patients may lead to frustration, cynicism. and burnout. Changing How We Think about Difficult Patients uses a multi-tiered approach to bring awareness to the difficult patient conundrum, then introduces simple, actionable tools that every physician, nurse, and caregiver can use to change their mindset about the patients who challenge them. Positive thoughts lead to more positive feelings and more effective treatments and results for patients. They also lead to more satisfaction and decreased feelings of burnout in healthcare professionals. How does this book give you an advantage? Caring for difficult patients poses a tremendous challenge for physicians, nurses, and clinical practitioners. It may contribute significantly to feelings of burnout, including feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and lost sense of purpose. In response, Dr. Naidorf offers a pragmatic approach to accepting patients the way they are, then provides strategies for providers to find more happiness and satisfaction in their interactions with even the most challenging patients and families. Here are just some of the topics the author discusses in detail: What Makes a "Good" Patient? The Four Core Ethical Principals of the Clinician-Patient Relationship The Four Models of the Physician-Patient Relationship What Challenges Anybody with Illness or Injury? How "Good" Patients Handle the Challenges of Illness and Injury Six Common Reactions to Illness and Hospitalization On "Taking Care of the Hateful Patient" Standards for Education in Medical Ethics De-escalation Strategies Cultural, Structural, and Language Issues Types of Patients Who Tend to Challenge Us The Think, Feel, Act Cycle Recognizing Our Preconceived Thoughts Three Common Thought Distortions About Patients Asking Useful Questions Getting Out of the Victim Mentality Guiding our Thoughts Through a Common Scenario Show Compassion, Feel Compassion If you're a healthcare provider or caregiver, Changing How We Think about Difficult Patients will give you the benefit of understanding your most challenging patients, and a roadmap to positively changing your mindset and actions to better deliver care and compassion for all.

If medicine is so great, why are more people getting sick? Why don't people turn up for follow-up checks or take their pills properly? And why do patients sometimes seem to come from another planet?Medicine doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens between doctors and patients, who seem to inhabit very different worlds. It's not enough to think about medicine. We need to think more about patients. Thinking About Patients promotes a multidimensional model of medicine. It offers a practical guide to the psychological and social processes involved in practising medicine and in being a patient. It will help us to return to what medicine is all about - using our skills to serve patients.

If medicine is so great, why are people getting sick? Why don’t people turn up for follow-up checks or take their pills properly? And why do patients sometimes seem to come from another planet? Medicine doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens between doctors and patients, who seem to inhabit very different worlds. It’s not enough to think about medicine. We need to think more about patients. Originally published in 2001 and reissued here with a new preface, Thinking About Patients promotes a multidimensional model of medicine. It offers a practical guide to the psychological and social processes involved in practicing medicine and in being a patient. It will help us to return to what medicine is all about – using our skills to serve patients.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.

Applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health care challenges, from drug packaging to early detection of breast cancer. This book makes a case for applying the principles of design thinking to real-world health care challenges. As health care systems around the globe struggle to expand access, improve outcomes, and control costs, Health Design Thinking offers a human-centered approach for designing health care products and services, with examples and case studies that range from drug packaging and exam rooms to internet-connected devices for early detection of breast cancer. Written by leaders in the field—Bon Ku, a physician and founder of the innovative Health Design Lab at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, and Ellen Lupton, an award-winning graphic designer and curator at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum—the book outlines the fundamentals of design thinking and highlights important products, prototypes, and research in health design. Health design thinking uses play and experimentation rather than a rigid methodology. It draws on interviews, observations, diagrams, storytelling, physical models, and role playing; design teams focus not on technology but on problems faced by patients and clinicians. The book's diverse case studies show health design thinking in action. These include the development of PillPack, which frames prescription drug delivery in terms of user experience design; a credit card–size device that allows patients to generate their own electrocardiograms; and improved emergency room signage. Drawings, photographs, storyboards, and other visualizations accompany the case studies. Copublished with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Patient-centered care is a way of thinking and doing things that considers patients partners in the development of a healthcare plan designed to meet their specific needs. It involves knowledge of the individual as a person and integrates that knowledge into their plan of care. Patient-centered care is central to the discussion of healthcare at the insurance and hospital-level. The quality of the service is evaluated more deeply from all the healthcare components, including insurance payments. It is the start of a new client- and patient-centered healthcare, which is based on a profound respect for patients and the obligation to care for them in partnership with them. Healthcare has been lacking a strategy to teach patients how to take care of themselves as much as they possibly can. In countries with socialized healthcare, patients don’t go to the emergency room unless it is necessary; they have a physician on call instead. This affords more personalized care and avoids patients getting lost in the hospital system. This book advocates the critical role of patients in the health system and the need to encourage healthy living. We need to educate patients on how to be more self-aware, giving them the tools to better understand what they need to do to achieve healthy lifestyles, and the protocols and policies to sustain a better life. Prevention has always been the pinnacle of medical care. It’s time to highlight and share this approach with patients and involve them as active participants in their own healthcare. This is the method on which to build the new healthcare for the next century.

Drs. Groopman and Hartzband reveal a clear path for making the right medical choices. Such factors as authority figures, statistics, other patients' stories, technology, and natural healing are key factors that shape choices.

This book examines the nature of service design and service thinking in healthcare and hospital management. By adopting both a service-based provider perspective and a consumer-oriented perspective, the book highlights various healthcare services, methods and tools that are desirable for customers and effective for healthcare providers. In addition, readers will learn about new research directions, as well as strategies and innovations to develop service solutions that are affordable, sustainable, and consumer-oriented. Lastly, the book discusses policy options to improve the service delivery process and customer satisfaction in the healthcare and hospital sector. The contributors cover various aspects and fields of application of service design and service thinking, including service design processes, tools and methods; service blueprints and service delivery; creation and implementation of services; interaction design and user experience; design of service touchpoints and service interfaces; service excellence and service innovation. The book will appeal to all scholars and practitioners in the hospital and healthcare sector who are interested in organizational development, service business model innovation, customer involvement and perceptions, and service experience.

On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.

Health systems are fluid and their components are interdependent in complex ways. Policymakers, academics and students continually endeavour to understand how to manage health systems to improve the health of populations. However, previous scholarship has often failed to engage with the intersections and interactions of health with a multitude of other systems and determinants. This book ambitiously takes on the challenge of presenting health systems as a coherent whole, by applying a systems-thinking lens. It focuses on Malaysia as a case study to demonstrate the evolution of a health system from a low-income developing status to one of the most resilient health systems today. A rich collaboration of multidisciplinary academics working with policymakers who were at the coalface of decision-making and practitioners with decades of experience, provides a candid analysis of what worked and what did not. The result is an engaging, informative and thought-provoking intervention in the debate. This title is Open Access.