Language in Clinical Reasoning

Clinical reasoning is still poorly understood. This §book opens up the subject by looking from the §viewpoint of language use. Adopting an §interdisciplinary approach, informed by scholars §such as Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, Bakhtin and Gadamer, §the study utilises a social constructionist approach §to reveal that clinical reasoning is primarily a §social and linguistic skill, acquired by §participating in communities of practice called §health professions. These communities of practice §have their own subculture which includes an §interpretive repertoire of specific language tools §and skills. The interpretive repertoire that health §professionals need to master includes skills with §words, categories, metaphors, heuristics, §narratives, rituals, rhetoric, and hermeneutics. All §these skills need to be coordinated, both in §constructing a diagnosis and management plan and in §communicating clinical decisions to other people, in §a manner that can be judged as intelligible, §legitimate, persuasive, and carrying the moral §authority for subsequent action. The book will be of §interest to educators and practitioners in the §health professions.