by Katalin Varga

I read this book because Dr Varga presented an excellent workshop at one of the ESH conferences, and I was inspired to hear further. This is a thick book with different chapters, all focussing on nocebo, and the words we use.

A variety of different authors contributed to each chapter. The writing was all interesting and easy to read, with plenty of referencing, and a pearl of wisdom to learn from every chapter. It was clear some of the authors did not have English as their first language, and whilst this made some of their suggestions slightly odd, I found in interesting to consider the real meaning of what they wanted to say.

Part one focussed on “Why? Main reasons for introducing suggestive communication into daily medical practice”, and this was a thorough introduction to nocebo. Much of what was said isn’t “new” information but is still nice to have it all collected together. The next few parts looked at rules, effects, perspectives and some cases. One of the parts looked at suggestive communication in specific medical fields.

Would I recommend this book? Yes. It’s very “medical”, but I enjoyed reading it. Is it the best book on nocebo? Probably, but on a £ spent for pearl learnt (it’s not a cheap book),

When I bought Patient Communication First Responders Personnel it was certainly the best value book around, but as it’s out of print, the few copies there are, are going up and up in cost!

Have you read this book? What do you think?