Patient Practitioner Interaction: An Experiential Manual for Developing the Art of Health Care

Over 20 years ago, Dr. Carol M. Davis created the path for teaching health care professionals how to develop self-awareness and communication skills critical to providing ethical, compassionate, and professional treatment and care to their patients.

That path is Patient Practitioner Interaction: An Experiential Manual for Developing the Art of Health Care, now in its Fifth Edition.

While the ways of communication have evolved over the last 23 years, the face-to-face role of the practitioner and patient has not. With technology having a large presence in health care, the personal interaction and comfort provided by the health care professional serves an even more important purpose in facilitating healing with therapeutic presence.

Patient Practitioner Interaction, Fifth Edition begins with chapters that assist students in self- awareness and understanding of their own history in developing their values and communication skills. This then guides the student into learning how to differentiate personal values from professional values.

In the remaining chapters, Dr. Carol M. Davis and her contributors take Patient Practitioner Interaction, Fifth Edition into the heart of the text: teaching actual skill development in communicating with patients, as well as skills in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. The updated exercises at the end of each chapter encourage an essential element in the inculcation of these fundamental skills―reflection and personalization of the material to one’s own story.
New in the Fifth Edition:• A new chapter on communicating about spirituality that teaches health care professionals to better assess the needs of patients and families dealing with hope, faith, and despair
• New material on communicating in the information age
• A reorganization of the chapters, contemporary terminology, and references
• New and updated exercises at the end of each chapter in the book
• A companion website that includes the chapter exercises―available with new textbook purchase
• Updated instructors material for faculty use in the classroom


Instructors in educational settings can visit www.efacultylounge.com for additional material to be used for teaching in the classroom.

From the Foreword by Dr. Helen J. Hislop:
“The author and contributors have made the topic not just a walk through social and personal issues and professional and personal behaviors, they have encased it in a scientific format of mainstream humanity, within each individual, between a caregiver and a care receiver, between friends or adversaries. Even more notably, Dr. Davis has provided health professionals with a road map to personal growth and worth and a source of human behavior that will engender faith, trust, and open and honest interactions between patients and therapists―in short, a thesaurus and encyclopedia of the sacred trust that must exist for a successful humanitarian experience in the health care arena.”

Patient Practitioner Interaction: An Experiential Manual for Developing the Art of Health Care, Fifth Edition by Dr. Carol M. Davis is the answer to every curriculum’s need to develop effective interpersonal professional behavior in their students.

Carol M. Davis, DPT, EdD, MS, FAPTA, is Professor Emerita of the Department of Physical Therapy in the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami and immediate past Vice Chair for Curriculum. Dr. Davis is an internationally known speaker and consultant in teaching and developing curriculum in professional behaviors, attitudes, and values and in complementary therapies in rehabilitation for physicians and all health professionals. In addition to being the author of Patient Practitioner Interaction: An Experiential Manual for Developing the Art of Health Care, Fifth Edition, she is the editor of Complementary Therapies in Rehabilitation: Evidence for Efficacy in Therapy, Prevention, and Wellness, Third Edition, also published by SLACK Incorporated, and co-editor of Therapeutic Interaction in Nursing.

Dr. Davis continues to teach doctor of physical therapy (DPT) students at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She has published several research articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of 18 book chapters. She served 6 years as a commissioner on the Commission on Accreditation for Physical Therapy Education and was a team leader and site visitor. She also served on the Ethics and Judicial Committee for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and was Chair in 2004–2005. She was awarded the Outstanding Teacher award by the Section on Geriatrics of the APTA in 2003, was named the 2005 Linda Crane Lecturer by the Sections on Cardiovascular and Pulmonary and Education, and was awarded the Lucy Blair Service Award in 1991 and the Catherine Worthingham Fellow award in 2003 by the APTA.

In addition to teaching and consulting, Dr. Davis maintains an active clinical practice, primarily treating patients with pain using energy-based myofascial release and exercise.