Are you a good communicator?

Communication for health care.

Catherine A Berglund, Deborah C Saltman (editors). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002 ($44.95, xiv + 257 pp). ISBN 0 19 551298 7.

Readers are drawn into examining their personal realities. Participants follow the path of a series of workshops supplemented by brief but succinct informal summaries. Most chapters provide activity boxes, simple categorisation models and exercises for evaluation. Frequent examples connect concepts raised to the realities of patients and their situations. Facets of techniques, personality, habits and assumptions that can help to clarify “What’s the right thing to do?” are learned.

Readers can expect to gain insights into their own performance, as well as a set of frameworks and tools they can use with their students, their colleagues, their patients and their families, and even with their own children and spouse.

Chapter cross-references help to maintain coherence across a range of topics that are not limited to interpersonal conversation. Subjects include information searching using libraries and informatics, writing and reporting, and working with the media. All the material is up to date, very practical, useful and readable at all levels, from the lay person to experienced practitioner.

Ken CoxEmeritus Professor of Surgery Hunters Hill, NSW