Medical Thinking

Lester S. King, M.D., focuses on those aspects of medicine that remain constant through the centuries--the problems that doctors always face and the critical judgment needed to solve them. According to Dr. King, modern technological advances are really new ways of answering old questions, while the basic modes of medical thinking have not changed. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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

Decision making is the physician's major activity. Every day, in doctors' offices throughout the world, patients describe their symptoms and com plaints while doctors perform examinations, order tests, and, on the basis of these data, decide what is wrong and what should be done. Although the process may appear routine-even to the physicians in volved-each step in the sequence requires skilled clinical judgment. Physicians must decide: which symptoms are important, whether any laboratory tests should be done, how the various items of clinical data should be combined, and, finally, which of several treatments (including doing nothing) is indicated. Although much of the information used in clinical decision making is objective, the physician's values (a belief that pain relief is more important than potential addiction to pain-killing drugs, for example) and subjectivity are as much a part of the clinical process as the objective findings of laboratory tests. In recent years, both physicians and psychologists have come to realize that patient management decisions are not only subjective but also prob abilistic (although this is not always acknowledged overtly). When doc tors argue that an operation is fairly safe because it has a mortality rate of only 1 %, they are at least implicitly admitting that the outcome of their decision is based on probability.

Employing critical-systems thinking, this study analyses the evolution of a health system providing universal coverage.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Forewords -- Preface: forewarned -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The recovery of metaphor in medicine -- 2 Metaphors, once down and out, make a comeback -- 3 What do we know about metaphors in medicine and what are the consequences of resisting metaphor? -- 4 'Medicine as war' and other didactic metaphors -- 5 Medical metaphors as resemblances: putting aesthetics to work -- 6 Functions of resemblances in medicine: 'food for thought' -- 7 Metaphors in psychiatry: the embodied mind at its limits -- 8 Metaphors in medical education: the pedagogic imagination -- 9 Poetry, metaphor and the medical imagination -- 10 'Thinking with metaphors in medicine: the state of the art': Part I: the odyssey -- 11 'Thinking with metaphors in medicine: the state of the art': Part II: the tournament joust -- Summary -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1 -- Appendix 2 -- Appendix 3 -- Bibliography -- Index

"I quickly swapped my ‘Ms Innocent, the world is tough but basically okay’ hat for the one of ‘Breast Cancer Patient’, madly trying to process everything that the doctor was saying.” An inauspicious encounter in a doctor’s surgery during a routine follow-up for IVF initiates a descent into a labyrinth of questioning and uncertainty. From those first words ushered out of the doctors mouth starts a year where the mind is consumed by medical research, medical terms, hospital visits, medication and explanations. The diagnosis was breast cancer. Filled with reflections on life, motherhood, friendship, and the future, A Year of Medical Thinking chronicles one woman’s ordinary life as it is catapulted into a quest for meaning and purpose. SK Reid has shared personal experiences in this book in a way that speaks to all. The book focuses on the shift that occurs in the brain after a potentially life threatening diagnosis; the loss of control, security and hope prompts philosophical and spiritual reflections on life, vitality and most importantly resilience. Guaranteed to strike a cord with those who have experienced the loss of a baby or any potentially life-threatening illness, readers are reminded about the importance of sharing stories, talking about grief and never giving up in the face of adversity. Author and renowned filmmaker, Paul Cox (Tales From The Cancer Ward, Transit Lounge, 2011) has described it as "a very courageous book" that will provide "comfort" and be of "help to others who face sudden twists of fate" in their lives.