Social change has placed new demands on the practice of medicine, altering almost every aspect of patient care relationships. Just as medicine was encouraged to embrace the biological sciences some 100 years ago, recent directives indicate the importance of the social sciences in understanding biomedical practice. Humanistic challenges call for changes in curative and technological imperatives. In this book, social scientists contribute to such challenges by using social evidence to indicate appropriate new goals for health care in a changing environment.

This book was designed to stimulate and challenge all those concerned with the human interactions that constitute medical practice. To encompass a wide range of topics, the authors include researchers; practicing physicians from the specialties of family, general, geriatric, pediatric, and oncological medicine; social and behavioral scientists; and public health representatives. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, they explore the ethical, economic, and social aspects of patient care.

These essays draw on past studies of the patient-doctor relationship and generate new and important questions. They address social behavior in patient care as a way to approach theoretical issues pertinent to the social and medical sciences. The authors also use social variables to study patient care and suggest new areas of sociomedical inquiry and new approaches to medical practice, education, and research.

Its cross-disciplinary approach and jargon-free writing make this book an important and accessible tool for physician, scholar, and student.