Clinicians are taught masses of facts, but not how to use them in the messy reality of patient care. This book provides a missing link between evidence and the clinical coalface. Though there are plenty of guides to evidence-based medicine, few explain how to build the information into patient oriented decision-making.

Preface: What this book is about. 1 Principles of clinical problem solving. 2 Communication in clinical care. 3 Models of disease. 4 Diagnosis. 5 Fine art of prognostication. 6 Making clinical management decisions. 7 Monitoring in chronic disease. 8 Screening for disease, health promotion and disease prevention. 9 Endpiece. References. Index

Clinicians are taught masses of facts, but not how to use them in the messy reality of patient care. This book provides a missing link between evidence and the clinical coalface. Though there are plenty of guides to evidence-based medicine, few explain how to build the information into patient oriented decision-making. Clinical Thinking allows you to think both logically and laterally about daily clinical issues and look at problems from different angles. The text uses realistic scenarios, frameworks and models and takes you through the whole decision-making process, from observation and narrative to evaluating the best evidence for the individual situation. Illustrations and flow charts are included to help clarify this new approach. These methods have been tried and tested by the authors, internationally respected general practitioners and teachers in primary care – all leaders in the evidence-based medicine movement. This book takes clinical medicine a big step forward in the direction of patient-focused practice!