BMJ  2004;328 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.0-g

Editor's choice

Medicine and man's fall

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

If medicine were simply a matter of prescribing drugs and wielding scalpels then monkeys—or at least robots—might make adequate doctors. It's the human bit, as in most enterprises, that makes medicine tricky, fascinating, and difficult. Medical journals might be accused of ignoring much of that complexity with their diet of drug trials and systematic reviews. Increasingly, however, we are publishing qualitative research that probes the interactions between doctors and patients.

Three authors from Australia and Canada have asked patients receiving palliative care and their families what they want to be told and found that many were unhappy with the communication process—particularly the disclosure of the initial diagnosis (p 1343). The authors identify six things that are important in communication in such circumstances: playing it straight, making it clear, showing that you (the doctors) care, giving time, pacing the information, and staying the course. Each individual, of course, wants . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Smith, editor

rsmith@bmj.com


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