Pharmacology can be difficult. But with the right text, understanding drugs and how they work doesn’t have to be! Using easy-to-follow language and engaging learning tools — like Memory Joggers, Clinical Pitfalls, Do Not Confuse, and Drug Alerts — the second edition of Understanding Pharmacology: Essentials for Medication Safety helps readers really understand how drugs work. In addition to the popular critical thinking activities from the first edition, the second edition also includes more chapter review questions, updated content, and a new organization that centers on the different body systems. For students who have a limited background in the sciences and want complete preparation for licensure exams and clinical practice, there is no better choice than Understanding Pharmacology, 2nd Edition! Entire unit reviewing math, weights and measures, and dosage calculation minimizes readers’ anxiety and promotes medication safety. Clever, easy-to-recognize margin icons help visual learners remember essential side effects of drugs. Simplified heading structure replaces intimidating terminology (i.e. pharmacokinetics) with simplified language (How These Drugs Work) to increase understanding of concepts. Drug Alert!, Do-Not-Confuse, and Clinical Pitfall boxes highlight important tips for safe medication administration. Memory Jogger boxes help readers remember important drug information. Get Ready for Practice sections at the end of each chapter include key points, chapter review questions, and critical thinking activities to reinforce learning. 10th grade reading level uses straightforward, everyday language to really enhance readers’ understanding of pharmacology concepts. Incorporation of adult learning theory features both a simple to complex organization of material along with answers to why readers need to learn something. NEW! Body system organization helps readers better understand drugs that are specific to particular body systems. NEW! More chapter review questions have been added to the text. All review questions are now organized into one of two categories: Test Yourself on the Basics and Test Yourself on Advanced Concepts.

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer." A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory—making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment—only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU—bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent—and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness—the diagnosis—revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient’s story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients’ lives.

"A first-person narrative that takes readers inside the medical profession as one doctor solves real-life medical mysteries"--Provided by publisher.

This book is the principal account of epidemiology’s role in the development of effective measures to identify, prevent, and treat diseases. Throughout history, epidemiologists have challenged conventional knowledge, elucidating mysteries of causality and paving the way for remedies. From the outbreak of the bubonic plague, cholera, and cancer to the search for an effective treatment of AIDS and the origins of Alzheimer’s disease, epidemiological thought has been crucial in shaping our understanding of population health issues. Alfredo Morabia’s lucid retelling sheds new light on the historical triumphs of epidemiological research and allows for contemporary readers, patients, and nontechnical audiences to make sense of the immense amount of health information disseminated by the media. By drawing from both historical and contemporary sources, Morabia provides the reader with the tools to differentiate health beliefs from health knowledge. The book covers important topics, including the H1N1 swine flu epidemic, breast cancer, the effects of aspirin, and the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. Enigmas of Health and Disease is a concise narrative helping patients and health providers develop a more informed relationship.

Written by a medical writer and family member of someone suffering from schizophrenia, this book outlines all of the issues involved with schizophrenia and its treatment including stigma, history, causes, physiological changes in the brain, and best treatments. It is an ideal reference and support for family members and others interested in this disease. It is also suitable as supplementary reading for students in health care fields (including medicine and nursing), psychology, social work and any occupation that needs solid information about schizophrenia. The book is recommended by the World Fellowship for Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders on its website.

Essential, required reading for doctors and patients alike: A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the world’s premiere cancer researchers reveals an urgent philosophy on the little-known principles that govern medicine—and how understanding these principles can empower us all. Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences? Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine. Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.

The first comprehensive look at the groundbreaking field of energy medicine and how it can be used to diagnose and treat illness, from one of the world’s foremost practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Today, more of us than ever are discovering the curative powers of energy medicine. Scientific studies continue to confirm its validity, and medical doctors are regularly prescribing treatments such as acupuncture to their patients. But even for those of us who have benefitted from such treatments, the question remains: what exactly is energy medicine, and how does it work? Acupuncturist and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) scholar Jill Blakeway has been treating patients for more than twenty-five years. For Jill, the term “energy medicine” refers to the wide range of healing modalities used to diagnose and treat illness by manipulating the energy—the vital life force referred to as “qi” in TCM—that pulses through the cells of our bodies. But even this seasoned practitioner admits she doesn’t truly understand how some of her patients are healed under her care, and retains a healthy skepticism about her own abilities as well those of her peers. In Energy Medicine, Jill invites us on her global journey to better understand, apply, and explain this powerful healing force. Moving from her own clinic to the halls of academia, she talks to top healers, researchers, and practitioners—from the Stanford and Princeton professors researching the physics behind energy medicine and healing; to a Chinese Qi Gong master who manifests healing herbs directly from her palm; to a team of skeptical scientists who use “hands on” healing to repeatedly cure mammary cancer in mice. She also tells the story of how she discovered energy medicine and became one of the most sought-after healers in the world. Lively, entertaining, and informative, told in Jill’s funny, relatable, and wholly grounded voice, Energy Medicine bridges the gap between science and spirituality and offers a persuasive, evidence-based case that advances this ancient healing practice.

'This is history with a surgeon's touch: deft, incisive and sometimes excruciatingly bloody' The Sunday Times 'Utterly eccentric and riveting' Mail on Sunday 'Eye-opening and, frequently, eye-watering . . . a book that invites readers to peer up the bottoms of kings, into the souls of rock stars and down the ear canals of astronauts' The Daily Telegraph How did a decision made in the operating theatre spark hundreds of conspiracy theories about JFK? How did a backstage joke prove fatal to world-famous escape artist Harry Houdini? How did Queen Victoria change the course of surgical history? Through dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today's sterile, high-tech operating theatres, surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his experience and expertise to tell an incisive history of the past, present and future of surgery. From the dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today's sterile, high-tech operating theatres, Under the Knife is both a rich cultural history, and a modern anatomy class for us all.