For the UK equivalent of this book, please see General Surgery Outpatient Decisions edited by Michael Gaunt, Tjun Tang and Stewart Walsh. Few doctors receive formal training on how to conduct an outpatient consultation or how to compose and dictate an outpatient letter. Trainee surgeons in each new specialty spend their first few weeks in outpatient clinics learning by experience, with all the pitfalls this entails. Much work involves seeing patients who have been brought back for review by their predecessors. Problems are caused by inexperience, unfamiliarity, fear of making mistakes, the...