The essential book on how not to be a doctor - and how to be a better one.Drawn from his popular medical columns over the years, John Launer shares fifty of his best-loved essays, covering topics from essentials skills they don’t teach you in medical school to his poignant account of being a patient himself as he received treatment for a life-threatening illness. Taken together, the stories make the case that being a doctor should mean drawing on every asp...

Who was Sabina Spielrein? Her dramatic life story is most famous for her notorious affair with Carl Jung, dramatised in the film A Dangerous Method starring Keira Knightley. Yet she was a woman who overcame family and psychiatric abuse to become an original thinker in the field of psychotherapy. This is the first biography to put her life and ideas at the centre of the story, and to examine Spielreins key role in the development of psychoanalysis and in the rift between Jung and Freud. Dra...

Primary care and psychotherapy are in some ways worlds apart. Yet both deal with the same human fundamentals: birth, and death, hope and disappointment, identity and uncertainty. This innovative book looks at how psychotherapists can make use of their skills in primary care. It examines how therapists, family physicians and other primary care professionals can all learn from each other through clinical collaboration. Each chapter describes a different practical approach to joint working in...

This book provides an important contribution to the new and growing field of ‘narrative-based medicine’. It specifically addresses the largest area of medical activity, primary care. It provides both a theoretical framework and practical skills for dealing with individual consultations, family work, clinical supervision and teamwork, and offers a comprehensive approach to the whole range of work in primary care. Using a wide range of clinical examples, it shows how professionals in primary...

This unique book presents in a single collection around 50 essays by Dr Launer on reflective practice in medicine, including examples specific to medical education and multiprofessional healthcare. Based on existing contributions to the literature by Dr Launer, the book brings them together in updated form for the first time as a themed collection with an introduction linking the different topics addressed. Coverage includes communication skills, supervision, teamwork and organisational he...

Narrative-Based Practice in Health and Social Care outlines a vision of how witnessing narratives, paying attention to them, and developing an ability to question them creatively, can make the person’s emerging story the central focus of health and social care, and of healing.This text gives an account of the practical application of ideas and skills from contemporary narrative studies to health and social care. Promoting narrative-based practice in everyday encounters wit...

This unique and practical book provides a clear introduction to clinical supervision and support in primary care. Supervision and Support in Primary Care provides practical information and guidance on the nature and purpose of clinical supervision. It uses examples and perspectives from the world of mental health, Balint groups and self-directed learning, and examines the benefits and challenges of supervision within the primary care setting. Numerous case studies are used throughout to de...

In November 2008, John Hattie’s ground-breaking book Visible Learning synthesised the results of more than fifteen years research involving millions of students and represented the biggest ever collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning.Visible Learning for Teachers takes the next step and brings those ground breaking concepts to a completely new audience. Written for students, pre-service and in-service teachers,...

Discover the latest research findings and thinking on the topics of happiness, flow, optimism, motivation, character strengths, love and more.

Medical competence is a hot topic surrounded by much controversy about how to define competency, how to teach it, and how to measure it. While some debate the pros and cons of competence-based medical education and others explain how to achieve various competencies, the authors of the seven chapters in The Question of Competence offer something very different. They critique the very notion of competence itself and attend to how it has shaped what we pay attention ...

Everybody wants it. But what exactly is happiness? The pursuit of happiness has been recognized by everyone from poets to politicians as what makes the world go round. The world's largest and fastest-growing industries - alcohol, pharmaceuticals, mind altering drugs, self-help books, counselling, travel and tourism - all profit heavily from our intent to become completely happy with our lives. In the first comprehensive book to address this most basic of human desires, Daniel Nettle explor...

Recovery is a concept which has emerged from the experiences of people with mental illness. It involves a shift away from traditional clinical preoccupations such as managing risk and avoiding relapse, towards new priorities of supporting the person in working towards their own goals and taking responsibility for their own life. This book sets an agenda for mental health services internationally, by converting these ideas of recovery into an action plan for professionals. The underlying pr...