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Notes on the book “Twice Dead” by Margaret Lock
This book presents an extensive review of the history and development of one of the most controversial medical practices – organ transplants. In fact, it would be fair to say that the book is not really about organ transplants but about the reinvention of death in the relatively new term “brain death”. Lock describes the making of this term, it’s popularization, the debates that surround it, and its cultural impact. Having worked for another project in Japan, Lock had an opportunity to research the issue of brain death there. This book provides a sort of comparison between the way the topic is approached in North America and in Japan. We…
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Notes on article by N. E. Conner and L. S. Eller “Spiritual perspectives, needs and nursing interventions of Christian African–Americans”
The article concludes that “the potential for spiritual care to influence both the psychological and physiological health of patients either directly or indirectly speaks to the urgency of providing patients with appropriate spiritual assessment and interventions” (631). I found this to be the most important part of the article, because while the authors had chosen to explore one subgroup as an example of the spiritual needs of the patients, this conclusion refers to all patients. “Respondents also wrote in their need for nurses to pray with and share personal beliefs with them. We found that 41% of desired spiritual nursing interventions were related to nurses’ direct participation in spiritual activities,…
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Notes on the case study by E. Li and C. Wen “Should the Confucian Family-Determination Model Be Rejected?”
This article describes a case that happened in a hospital in China, when a young lady on the 9th month of pregnancy came in and was diagnosed with severe pneumonia, followed by a sharp drop in cardiopulmonary function and general edema, and soon after arriving at the hospital went into coma. The doctors considered cesarian section as the optimal solution to save the lives of the mother and the baby, but the father of the child did not give his permission for the surgery, and the other relatives of the woman were hard to reach. Because the surgery had been postponed until the hospital could have consent from the family…
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Medicine is a Humane Art: the Basic Principles of Professional Ethics in Chinese Medicine by Zhang and Cheng
This article provides a review of the history of Chinese medicine and the growth and development of medical ethics in this context. What I found especially interesting is the emphasis on the way ethics is addressed, how ethically right behaviour is promoted. We see that Chinese culture pays much attention to moral evaluation, which is expressed by the filial obedience, being respectful and nice to others independent of their social status, and in cherishing life, with appreciation of mortality. Confucius taught that everybody had an inner sense of right and wrong, which they knew by self examination, rather than by following laws and restrictions. “Benevolence is the core of Confucian…
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Notes on “Medicine, Religion and Health” by Koenig
In his book “Medicine, Religion and Health” Koenig raises several important questions about the role of spirituality in the healthcare settings. First of all, he address the problem of definition of the term spirituality. As it is shown, due to the fact that spirituality in itself is a very private matter, it can be described differently by every person. Koenig brings up several definitions of different researchers and eventually offers his own. In his opinion, spirituality should be linked to religion even though it does not necessarily imply religious belief. While there may be different opinions on the precise definition of spirituality, Koenig points out that in the clinical settings…