spiritual care
-
Notes on the book by Puchalski, C. M., Ferrell, B. “Making Health Care Whole: Integrating Spirituality into Patient Care”
This book is created on the basis of the national conference, where spiritual and palliative care experts gathered to discuss guidelines for incorporating spirituality into palliative care. The question is vital as in the past years there has been more and more attention given to the role of spirituality within palliative care, its necessary part in caring for ill and dying patients. Simply recognizing the importance of addressing spiritual issues in healthcare proves not to be enough, and the healthcare professionals need to be educated specifically on what spirituality is and how spiritual care should be delivered. The book “Making Health Care Whole” is meant to provide necessary definitions of…
-
Notes on “Midrash and Medicine. Healing Body and Soul in the Jewish Interpretive tradition”
The book is a collection of essays and articles that present the views of some of the most sensitive people to the ideas of jewish cultural tradition of midrash within the healthcare settings. The book is divided into themes, within each of them two different people present their perspective views on the given subject. These are not always the opposite views, I would rather call them complementary of each other. For example, in the first pair essays exploring the use of metaphors in the healing process both Rabbi Simka Y. Weintraub and Stuart Schoffman describe the use of metaphors in understanding of one’s illness and in accessing the healings. While…
-
Notes on “Healing Logics” edited by Erica Brady
This book is a collection of essays that was put together after the Utah State University’s conference on folk medicine, which made it evident that existing models of investigation and research proved to be limiting in exploration of the health belief systems that exist in multitude in the US. The general conclusion of this conference (and the collection of essays) is that these health belief systems are built on the bases of very diverse sources of authority, such as community and ethnic tradition, spiritual beliefs, personal experience, and persecutions of the formal medicine. Through the essays we can observe the relationship between these systems of authority being competing, conflicting, and…
-
Notes on the book by M.C.Brannigan “Cultural Faultlines in Healthcare: Reflections on Cultural Competency”
This book is meant to draw the readers’ attention to the problems of providing the sensitive care to the patients within American health care system. Brannigan describes the problems caused by the diversity of worldview and values among the patients and doctors that meet through the health care system. The differences in approaches and understandings are causing what he calls cultural faultlines, the divisive issues that cause misunderstandings and create obstacles for better care. This outstanding problem is further fuelled by the fact that the American society in general has grown a profound distrust of the healthcare. Having described the essential problem, the author proposes a solution. He believes that…