Communication and Medical Practice

David Silverman provides a comprehensively researched and analytically sensitive account of how doctors and patients relate. Drawing on a wide range of original fieldwork from both the UK and elsewhere and from a variety of hospital settings, both privately and publicly funded, he demonstrates the complexity of medical interactions and the importance of their context.

Among the key themes of the book are: the way in which doctor-patient talk varies according to the trajectory of the patient's medical career and the method of payment for treatment; the implicit problems in paediatric medicine in negotiating between the rights and responsibilities of children and their parents; and the difficulties intrinsic to reformist medical practice and patient-centred medicine