Patient Safety – The Relevance of Logic in Medical Care

In our time of well-publicized health care travails, in the USA and the UK and elsewhere, matters of financing too often subsume the dimension of patient care. In his latest book, Alexander L. Gungov studies a vital but neglected aspect of patient safety. Of the thousands of medical errors committed on a daily basis, in the bulk of unfortunate clinical decisions, a significant share pertains to various logical flows and epistemological fallacies. By focusing on the logical dimensions of clinical medicine, Gungov promotes awareness of the logical and epistemological traps that lie in the day-to-day care of patients. Such a focus not only allows us to avoid falling into them, but demonstrates the practical value of looking at medicine from a new philosophical perspective. That perspective involves a broad and unusual collection of philosophers. The discussion takes its starting point from J. S. Mills inductive methods and Giambattista Vicos verum-factum principle, but then sets out a unique combination of Charles Sanders Peirces abductive reasoning, Immanuel Kants reflective judgment, as well as G. W. F. Hegels and D. P. Verenes speculative thinking, all marshalled to present a novel philosophical account of clinical diagnostics. Interpretation of practical examples elucidate the logical aspect of medical errors and suggests strategies of overcoming them. The book as a whole demonstrates the value of Hans-Georg Gadamers hermeneutical insights into the enigmatic character of health. This much-needed book will be of interest to medical practitioners, health policy-makers, patients and their families, and to advanced students and scholars in medicine, the medical humanities, medical epistemology, and the philosophy of medicine in general.

Medical knowledge is developing on the frontier of knowledge of the various basic sciences and reflects their advance. Medical knowledge is also based on scientific evidence. The evidence develops on the basis of logical relationships combining the basic data about the etiology, pathogenesis, and clinics of diseases. The study of these relationships is of major importance for practicing clinicians and for scientific development in general. In this line of work the book Patient Safety by Alexander L. Gungov is a valuable study of the logical processes and cause and effect relationships in medical science. And if the popular statement goes that in medicine 2 + 2 does not always equal 4, this book proves it! This makes it invaluable for practicing clinicians, researchers, and leaders in healthcare systems.--Rossen Kolarov, professor of face and jaw surgery, Varna Medical University

Alexander L. Gungov is Professor of Logic and Continental Philosophy at the University of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridski" and Director of the M.A. and Ph.D. Program in Philosophy Taught in English. He is the author of Logic of Deception and Logic in Medicine (both in Bulgarian). Dr. Gungov is the Editor of Sofia Philosophical Review.