This book provides practical tips to arm doctors with the knowledge to sharpen their communication skills thus improving their relationships with patients and avoiding errors and litigation.

It is stimulating and easy-to-read and is written with a ‘how to’ approach in a straightforward journalistic style by noted experts in the field. The book’s contributors offer valuable and usable advice on everything from documentation to listening skills to avoiding jargon and ‘medispeak.’

All doctors at every level will find something of value in this enlightening read.

‘Physicians generally are blessed with, and educated to have, many skills but, unfortunately, effective communications skills and the ability to write clearly often seem to be missing from their list of abilities. Editor David Woods addresses these absent or weakly developed skills with humor and the insight of a gifted writer in this collection of physician communication advice. There is something for everyone here and no reader of this wonderful, witty, and thought provoking collection will fail to gain insight into how to improve his or her communication skills with patients and others. David Woods and his co-contributors present us with a wonderful menu of delicacies, a sumptuous communication feast guaranteed to satisfy the appetite of every physician who wishes to become a better communicator. The contributors’ distinctive writing styles only add to this collection’s diverse flavors. It is a book to be dipped into and savored piece by piece, and need not be read from cover-to-cover in one sitting.’
John J Gartland, Medical Editor, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia

* Patients are a virtue
* Watch your language
* Physician heal thyself
* Managing your practice
* Minimizing risk
* Quiz
* Reading to keep up-to-date
* How to avoid alienating patients
* The future of medical publishing
* How to respond to an angry complaint

''This book is a valuable guide for physicians at all levels of practice and a useful text for educating medical students. It reads easily and the content is immediately relevant to practice situations.'' DOODY'S BOOK REVIEWS