This book takes readers through forty-five challenging scenarios to teach communication skills in medicine. It follows the revised format of the Practical Assessment of Clinical Examination Skills (PACES) exam conducted by the Royal College of Physicians in the UK, which tests communication skills twice in two separate stations. As most scenarios in this book have been created in an acute medical unit setting, the approach followed should also appeal to senior medical students and trainees in internal medicine and general practice at all levels. Readers will learn:
• How to convey abnormal test results and break bad news.
• How to discuss the diagnosis of a chronic disease and negotiate a management plan.
• How to communicate with patients who pose an ethical dilemma.
• How to communicate with challenging patients and relatives.
• What to tell patients or relatives when things go wrong.
• How to communicate with patients and relatives regarding end-of-life issues.

Key Features:
• Takes readers through a simple step-by-step approach to skillfully dealing with common challenging communication scenarios they face in their daily practice.
• Guides readers on how to communicate in layman’s terms without using medical jargon, as it is fully dialogued, proving particularly helpful to non-UK candidates, whose first language is not English.
• Simplifies several complex ethical and medicolegal principles, such as treatment of patients lacking capacity, dealing with patients who refuse consent, confidentiality, counselling a non-compliant patient, basic genetic counselling, management
of patients who demand non-indicated investigations or treatments, open disclosure after a medical error, preparing an advance decision and lasting power of attorney, issues around brain death and organ donation, tube feeding, Do Not Attempt Resus- citation orders and referral to the coroner.

Dr. Ernest Suresh is currently the head of medicine at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital in Singapore. Over the last three decades, he has worked in three different countries with contrasting healthcare systems and cultures. He has been teaching MRCP candidates for over two decades and received more than a dozen teaching excellence awards in the last ten years alone. He has regularly published educational review articles on a wide range of topics in peer-reviewed internal medicine journals and written an acute medicine handbook to guide the junior doctors in his hospital. His previous book, Clinical Consultation Skills in Medicine: A Primer for MRCP PACES, takes readers through a simple, clear and rational approach to 63 common presenting symptoms or laboratory abnormalities in medicine.

He believes that all doctors, regardless of their speciality, should practice holistically, and learn to treat the person that has the illness and not just the illness the person has. He considers himself an ‘old-fashioned clinician’ and pays a lot of attention to bedside clinical skills and communication, the essential traits that the Royal College expects PACES candidates to possess.