Patient-Centred Medicine in Transition

Book excerpt: This book challenges functional models for more aesthetic and ethical models, where communication is grounded in values systems of cultures. Here, communication is treated as a distributed phenomenon involving networks of persons, activities and artifacts, and extends beyond doctor-patient relationships to working in and across teams around patients. The purpose of the book is to stimulate thinking about how patient care and safety may be improved through a focus upon the ‘non-technical’ work of doctors – interpersonal communication, teamwork and situation awareness in teams. The focus is then not on the personality of the doctor, but on the dynamics of relationships which form doctors’ multiple identities.