Society for Medical Decision Making

Saturday, January 9, 2016
09:30 - 10:30
Shaw

Iona Heath MB BChir FRCGP FRCP
The Importance of Uncertainty

Clinical medicine applies knowledge derived from the study of populations to unique individuals, and so, always and inevitably it is beset by uncertainty.  This uncertainty opens up a space for decision-making that is authentically shared between patient and doctor.

Speaker Biography
Iona Heath worked as an inner city general practitioner in Kentish Town in London from 1975 until 2010.   She is a Past President of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners. 

She has written regularly for the British Medical Journal and has contributed essays to many other medical journals across the world.  She has been particularly interested to explore the nature of general practice, the importance of medical generalism, issues of justice and liberty in relation to health care, the corrosive influence of the medical industrial complex and the commercialisation of medicine, and the challenges posed by disease-mongering, the care of the dying, and violence within families.  Her book ‘Matters of Life and Death’ was published in 2007.

View the keynote presentation schedule.