Becoming a Consummate Clinician (PDF)

With hospital medicine growing rapidly in both scale andcomplexity, the learning curve for students is steeper, whileexperienced physicians are often called upon to act as mentors andcaregivers in areas outside their primary fields of expertise.Becoming a Consummate Clinician, an exciting new book in theseries Hospital Medicine: Current Concepts, describes in practicalterms how clinicians and students can think more critically and actmore insightfully in this era of information expansion and timecompression. Developed for hospital-based clinicians andphysicians-in-training, the book provides a road map for navigatingkey challenges in real-life medical practice related to assessing,integrating, and presenting clinical information. Clearly formattedand easily accessible, the book:
* Fully integrates and emphasizes error avoidance andreduction
* Highlights uses and limitations of algorithmic andevidence-based medicine in medical decision-making
* Details effective strategies for looking and"re-looking" at biomedical data
* Explains essential do's and don'ts ofmedicalpractice, from patient history and exam to differentialdiagnoses
* Describes best practices and pitfalls of gathering, processing,and communicating medical information
* Presents strategies for attending physicians to develop thecritical thinking skills of their trainees

Featuring real-world clinical examples, this concise,down-to-earth text is written to help both practitioners andstudents improve their overall clinical performance, and learn tocommunicate effectively with members of the caregiving team.