Introduction What is the CauseHealth Handbook? -- Part I Philosophy Chapter 1 Dispositions and the Single Patient -- Chapter 2 Probability for the Clinic -- Chapter 3 When a Cause Cannot be Found -- Chapter 4 Reductionism and the Biomedical Model -- Chapter 5 The Guidelines Challenge -- Part II Practice Chapter 6 Above and Beyond Statistical Evidence. Why Stories Matter for Clinical Decisions and Shared Decision Making -- Chapter 7 The Complexity of Persistent Pain – A Patient’s Perspective -- Chapter 8 Causality and Dispositionality for Diagnosis in Medical Practice -- Chapter 9 Lessons from a Clinic for Patients with Severe Obesity -- Chapter 10 Reflections on the Clinician’s Role in the Clinical Encounter -- Chapter 11 Psychotherapy in a Conditional World – A Plea for Causal Dispositionalism -- Chapter 12 Evidence-Based Healthcare and dispositionalism -- Chapter 13 The Practice of Whole Person Centred Healthcare -- Chapter 14 A Broken Child, a Diseased Woman -- Conclusion Toward a New Paradigm.

Open Access

This open access book is a unique resource for health professionals who are interested in understanding the philosophical foundations of their daily practice. It provides tools for untangling the motivations and rationality behind the way medicine and healthcare is studied, evaluated and practiced. In particular, it illustrates the impact that thinking about causation, complexity and evidence has on the clinical encounter. The book shows how medicine is grounded in philosophical assumptions that could at least be challenged. By engaging with ideas that have shaped the medical profession, clinicians are empowered to actively take part in setting the premises for their own practice and knowledge development. Written in an engaging and accessible style, with contributions from experienced clinicians, this book presents a new philosophical framework that takes causal complexity, individual variation and medical uniqueness as default expectations for health and illness.