Book excerpt: This book has established itself as a key text for all doctors, whatever their experience and wherever they practice. The role of doctors is changing: where doctors were once seen as a repository of knowledge and experience, the internet now gives many patients immediate access to a vast amount of detailed information - more than any doctor could expect to hold in their head. As patients become participants, doctors are increasingly adjusting to new roles and forms of communication - from tellers and controllers to listeners, sharers and interpreters. This new edition of The Doctor's Communication Handbook takes these latest developments into account, with an entirely new chapter on the essentials of good doctoring. Conversational in tone and spiced as ever with lighthearted but informative cartoons, it remains a key text for doctors at all levels and in all settings. It will be of particular value to candidates sitting the new Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners (nMRCGP) examination, particularly the Clinical Skills Examination (CSE), and to undergraduate medical students.