Field Guide to the Difficult Patient Interview (2nd edition)

Part I: The Efficient Interview
1. Basic listening technique
2. Listening
3. Building rapport: EMPATHY, the universal tool
4. Understanding nonverbal communication
5. The primacy of symptoms
6. The data base
7. Culture and language

Part II: The Efficient Interview: Dealing with Patient Emotions
8. Sadness and fear
9. Anger
10. Ambivalence

Part III: Explaining
11. Patient education
12. Giving bad news
13. Comforting the grieving family: survivors of a patient death
14. Shared decision-making and informed consent

Part IV: The Clinical Attitude
15. Patience
16. Curiosity
17. “OK” and “Wow”: the short words
18. Self-awareness: what are you thinking now?
19. Hope

Part V: Dealing with a Difficult Relationship
20. Those dreaded phrases
21. Acknowledging difficult relationships and interactions
22. Understanding the meaning of illness
23. Addressing disagreements about diagnosis or therapy
24. Trust and distrust
25. Establishing boundaries
26. Avoiding seduction
27. Asking for help
28. Clinician-to-clinician communication: talking to colleagues
29. Doctors firing patients – patients firing doctors

Part VI: Illness and Loss
30. Chronic pain and suffering
31. Somatization
32. The transition from disease-based care to palliative care
33. End-of-life discussions: advance care plans and DNR orders
34. Being with a dying patient
35. Talking with families of seriously ill patients

Part VII: Who’s in Charge Here? Behavioral Health Risks
36. Assessing risk behaviors
37. Nonadherence
38. Violence
39. Alcohol use
40. Sex

Part VIII: Puzzling Problems
41. The list-maker
42. The patient’s companion
43. Confusion: communicating with the cognitively impaired patient
44. The patient bearing literature
45. Distant medicine
46. When your patient is a doctor
47. Disclosing unexpected outcomes and errors
48. Coaching communication skills