Download or read book Doctors and Healers written by Tobie Nathan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-08-08 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We think we know what healers do: they build on patients’ irrational beliefs and treat them in a ‘symbolic’ way. If they get results, it’s thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all. In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this commonly posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don’t listen to patients, using techniques of ‘divination’ rather than ‘diagnosis’. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer. Modern medicine, for its part, is characterized by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment. Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom.
Download or read book From Doctor to Healer written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would a successful physician who has undergone seven years of rigorous medical training take the trouble to seek out and learn to practice alternative methods of healing such as homeopathy and Chinese medicine? From Doctor to Healer answers this question as it traces the transformational journeys of physicians who move across the philosophical spectrum of American medicine from doctor to healer. Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John conducted extensive interviews to discover how and why physicians make the move to alternative medicine, what sparks this shift, and what beliefs they abandon or embrace in the process. After outlining the basic models of American health care-the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic-the authors follow the thoughts and experiences of forty physicians as they expand their horizons in order to offer effective patient care. The book focuses on the radical shift from one end of the spectrum to the other-from the technocratic approach to holism-made by most of the interviewees. Because many American physicians find such a drastic change too threatening, the authors also address the less radical transition to humanism-a movement toward compassionate care arising from within the medical system.
Download or read book Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture written by Arthur Kleinman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Preface, by Arthur Kleinman: Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture presents a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. That framework is principally illustrated by materials gathered in field research in Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, from materials gathered in similar research in Boston. The reader will find this book contains a dialectical tension between two reciprocally related orientations: it is both a cross-cultural (largely anthropological) perspective on the essential components of clinical care and a clinical perspective on anthropological studies of medicine and psychiatry. That dialectic is embodied in my own academic training and professional life, so that this book is a personal statement. I am a psychiatrist trained in anthropology. I have worked in library, field, and clinic on problems concerning medicine and psychiatry in Chinese culture. I teach cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology, but I also practice and teach consultation psychiatry and take a clinical approach to my major cross-cultural teaching and research involvements. The theoretical framework elaborated in this book has been applied to all of those areas; in turn, they are used to illustrate the theory. Both the theory and its application embody the same dialectic. The purpose of this book is to advance both poles of that dialectic: to demonstrate the critical role of social science (especially anthropology and cross-cultural studies) in clinical medicine and psychiatry and to encourage study of clinical problems by anthropologists and other investigators involved in cross-cultural research. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980. From the Preface, by Arthur Kleinman: Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture presents a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. That framework is principally illustrated by materials gathered
Download or read book On Becoming a Healer written by Saul J. Weiner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An invaluable guide to becoming a competent and compassionate physician. Medical students and physicians-in-training embark on a long journey that, although steeped in scientific learning and technical skill building, includes little guidance on the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of becoming a healer. Written for anyone in the health care community who hopes to grow emotionally and cognitively in the way they interact with patients, On Becoming a Healer explains how to foster doctor-patient relationships that are mutually nourishing. Dr. Saul J. Weiner, a physician-educator, argues that joy in medicine requires more than idealistic aspirations—it demands a capacity to see past the "otherness" that separates the well from the sick, the professional in a white coat from the disheveled patient in a hospital gown. Weiner scrutinizes the medical school indoctrination process and explains how it molds the physician's mindset into that of a task completer rather than a thoughtful professional. Taking a personal approach, Weiner describes his own journey to becoming an internist and pediatrician while offering concrete advice on how to take stock of your current development as a physician, how to openly and fully engage with patients, and how to establish clear boundaries that help defuse emotionally charged situations. Readers will learn how to counter judgmentalism, how to make medical decisions that take into account the whole patient, and how to incorporate the organizing principle of healing into their practice. Each chapter ends with questions for reflection and discussion to help personalize the lessons for individual learners.
Download or read book The Healer s Art written by Eric J. Cassell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond drugs, beyond technology, there will always be the human element, the healer's art. Dr. Cassell discusses the world of the sick, the healing connection and healer's battle, the role of omnipotence in the healer's art, illness and disease, and overcoming the fear of death. Eric J. Cassell, M.D., is an internist and clinical director of the Program for the Study of Ethics and Values in Medicine at Cornell Medical School. His two-volume work Talking with Patients: The Theory of Doctor-Patient Communication, and Clinical Technique, is available from The MIT Press in cloth and paperback.
Download or read book Patients Doctors and Healers written by Dorthe Brogård Kristensen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognizing the interplay between biomedicine and indigenous medicine among the Mapuche in Southern Chile, this book explores notions of culture and personhood through the bodily experiences and medical choices of patients. Through case studies of patients in the context of medical pluralism, Kristensen argues that medical practices are powerful social symbol indicative of overarching socio-political processes. As certain types of extreme and violent experiences–known as olvidos–lack a framework that allows them to be expressed openly, they therefore surface as symptoms of an illness, often with no apparent organic pathology. In these contexts, indigenous medicine, thanks to its sensitivity to socio-political contexts, provides a space for articulation and management of collective experiences and suffering among patients in Southern Chile.
Download or read book When Doctors Become Patients written by Robert Klitzman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many doctors, their role as powerful healer precludes thoughts of ever getting sick themselves. When they do, it initiates a profound shift of awareness-- not only in their sense of their selves, which is invariably bound up with the "invincible doctor" role, but in the way that they view their patients and the doctor-patient relationship. While some books have been written from first-person perspectives on doctors who get sick-- by Oliver Sacks among them-- and TV shows like "House" touch on the topic, never has there been a "systematic, integrated look" at what the experience is like for doctors who get sick, and what it can teach us about our current health care system and more broadly, the experience of becoming ill.The psychiatrist Robert Klitzman here weaves together gripping first-person accounts of the experience of doctors who fall ill and see the other side of the coin, as a patient. The accounts reveal how dramatic this transformation can be-- a spiritual journey for some, a radical change of identity for others, and for some a new way of looking at the risks and benefits of treatment options. For most however it forever changes the way they treat their own patients. These questions are important not just on a human interest level, but for what they teach us about medicine in America today. While medical technology advances, the health care system itself has become more complex and frustrating, and physician-patient trust is at an all-time low. The experiences offered here are unique resource that point the way to a more humane future.
Download or read book The Healer s Power written by Howard Brody and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Although the physician's use and misuse of power have been discussed in the social sciences and in literature, they have never been explored in medical ethics until now. In this book, Dr. Howard Brody argues that the central task is not to reduce the physician's power, as others have suggested, but to develop guidelines for its use, so that the doctor shares with the patient both information and the responsibility for deciding on appropriate treatment." "Dr. Brody first reviews literary works dealing with medical power, from Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" to stories by William Carlos Williams, Vonda McIntyre, and Richard Selzer. These works, he shows, reveal the healers' ambivalence over their own power and patients' fears of the abuse of power. Dr. Brody then points out important but neglected ethical issues that emerge from an analysis of power, such as the tension between care of individual patients and the pressures of the doctor's workload; the rescue fantasy that impels some physicians to extraordinary lengths to save a life; and the economic system, which rewards surgeons and other specialists more than it does physicians who spend time talking with patients about their problems. He also shows how the perspective of shared power can shed new light on standard topics in medical ethics--from informed consent and confidentiality to resource allocation and cost containment."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Women Healers and Physicians written by Lilian R. Furst and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women traditionally have been expected to tend to the sick as part of their domestic duties, yet throughout history they have faced an uphill struggle to be accepted as healers outside of the household.
Download or read book The Healers written by and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Healers written by David Schenck and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healing is often discussed but infrequently studied. Schenck and Churchill provide a systematic approach to the elements that make clinician-patient interactions themselves a source of healing, based on comprehensive interviews with 50 physicians and alternative practitioners. The authors present a compelling picture of how healing happens in the practices of extraordinary clinicians.
Download or read book Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire written by Ido Israelowich and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-04 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive study of both patients and healers in the High Roman Empire. Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire offers a fascinating holistic look at the practice of ancient Roman medicine. Ido Irsaelowich presents three richly detailed case studies—one focusing on the home and reproduction; another on the army; the last on medical tourism—from the point of view of those on both sides of the patient-healer divide. He explains in depth how people in the classical world became aware of their ailments, what they believed caused particular illnesses, and why they turned to certain healers—root cutters, gymnastic trainers, dream interpreters, pharmacologists, and priests—or sought medical care in specific places such as temples, bath houses, and city centers. The book brings to life the complex behavior and social status of all the actors involved in the medical marketplace. It also sheds new light on classical theories about sickness, the measures Romans undertook to tackle disease and improve public health, and personal expectations for and evaluations of various treatments. Ultimately, Israelowich concludes that this clamoring multitude of coexisting forms of health care actually shared a common language. Drawing on a diverse range of sources—including patient testimonies; the writings of physicians, historians, and poets; and official publications of the Roman state—Patients and Healers in the High Roman Empire is a groundbreaking history of the culture of classical medicine.
Download or read book The Nature of Healing written by Eric J. Cassell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Currently and for centuries past, sickness has been understood to be primarily the physical result of bodily disease. Yet this definition of illness is out-of-date and untrue to life at a time when chronic illness and the problems of disability and aging are increasingly common. When persons are sick, it pervades their whole being. The Nature of Healing is based on a different definition of sickness, one that recognizes persons as sick when they cannot achieve their goals and purposes because of impairments of function, ranging from the molecular to the spiritual, which they believe to fall under the scope of medicine. Such impairments may result from disease, but certainly not all. As the sick person has increasingly become the focus of medicine, there have been repeated but mostly failed attempts to achieve both technological and humanistic goals in caring for patients. This approach is flawed because there is only one ultimate goal -- the well-being of the patient. Whether it involves the personal action of the clinician or the use of technology, everything done toward the goal of well-being is part of the healing enterprise. In this book, Eric Cassell explores what sickness is, what persons are, and how to understand function and its impairments. He explains healing skills and actions, as well as the nature of healing for sick and suffering patients. This book concludes with a discussion of the moral basis of the relationship between patient and healer, as well as the goals of healing.
Download or read book Wounded Parents Wounded Doctors Wounded Healers written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this study is to examine the role of physicians in the process of healing within the context of our current medical system. As an autoethnographic study, it explores the healing process from wounds the researcher experienced as a physician, teacher, student, and at times a sick patient. This study reflects on the experiences, insights, and observations that have molded the researcher’s spirit toward that of a healer not only of patients but also of the fragmented medical system. This study explores the early childhood experiences and wounds that were instrumental in the researcher’s initial pursuit of a medical career. In addition, this study explores how the researcher’s journey of over 40 years, dedicated to practicing high tech, high risk, intensive care medicine of critically ill patients has deeply shaped the researcher’s persona as a healer. Since the time of the researcher’s initial specialization in medicine, other areas of medicine as well as other disciplines relating to the humanities have been explored. This study incorporates the lessons, knowledge, experiences, and perspectives from those disciplines and thereby expands the scope of this research study. The autoethnographic approach is appropriate for gaining a greater understanding of self, others, and the culture. The essence of healing necessitates the integration of mind, body, spirit, and consciousness, which encompass multiple therapeutic approaches. In summary, the healing process incorporates aspects of both art and science that optimally benefit not only the patient, doctor, and healer, but also the medical system.
Download or read book The Healer s Calling written by Kilbride-Clinton Professor of Medicine and Ethics Daniel P Sulmasy, O.F.M., M.D. and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Healer's Calling addresses the longings of many people in the health care professions for a renewed sense of the transcendent meaning of their work, and for a return to the spiritual elements of healing.
Download or read book Medicine Women Curanderas and Women Doctors written by Bobette Perrone and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories of ten women healers form the core of this provocative journey into cultural healing methods utilized by women. In a truly grass-roots project, the authors take the reader along to listen to the voices of Native American medicine women, Southwest Hispanic curanderas, and women physicians as they describe their healing paths. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the relationship between illness and healing-medical practitioners and historians, patients, anthropologists, feminists, psychologists, psychiatrists, theologians, sociologists, folklorists, and others who seek understanding about our relationship to the forces of both illness and healing.
Download or read book Advice to the Young Physician written by Richard Colgan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-10-30 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advice to the Young Physician introduces the origins of important teachings that form the basis of medicine as it has been taught by some of history's greatest educators in medicine. Advice to the Young Physician reveals how to make the transition from technician to healer. This book reinforces the humanistic side of patient care, which is often overshadowed by the focus on highly technological elements. Medical students, residents, fellows, physicians, and allied health practitioners often forget the intricacies of the genomic makeup of adenoviruses, yet they remember the tips, anecdotes and aphorisms related by mentors, educators, and experienced physicians. The art of medicine comes from insights gained from unique and dynamic experiences between the physician, an enthusiastic medical student and the human patient, and is rarely found in books or taught in a universal and systematic way. Advice to the Young Physician provides numerous examples of best practices in order to internalize and practice the art of medicine, including tenets taught by Hippocrates, Maimonides, Osler, Peabody, Schweitzer and others. Advice to the Young Physician targets aspiring and new physicians with the intent to make them better physicians. It hits the mark. An effective mix of the writings of some of medicine's giants, as well as clinical experiences of the author, the book offers an historical framework and personal context to understand the attributes and attitudes of the good physician. It is a quick read that rewards the reader with a sampling of 4000 years of medical wisdom sprinkled with practical advice for the modern day doctor. --Richard G. Roberts, MD, JD, Professor of Family Medicine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, President World Organization of Family Doctors, Past President American Academy of Family Physicians This is a small book and easy to read. It comprises several inspiring sketches of ancient and modern physicians whose reputations were based as much on their dedication to the humanism of medicine as it was to the science of medicine. Those who teach medical students and residents will find it a good source of medical history that, besides being important in itself, will add a new dimension and a little lightness to morning rounds. The author makes it clear that in our era of high technology it is easy to underestimate the importance of uniting humanism with science in caring for the sick. He also provides some practical information on such topics as how to present a case to attending physicians and how to communicate well with patients. The ancient physicians that history remembers were not only astute observers of signs and symptoms but also were deeply concerned about the psychological health of their patients and how disturbances in their emotional health often manifested in physical symptoms. Colgan starts with Hippocrates and Maimonides whose names many young physicians are familiar with. The former for the aphorism “first do no harm” and the latter for being one of the first to call medicine a “vocation” and a “calling.” The following “greats” are included in the book: Dr Albert Schweitzer whose “reverence for life” led him to his missionary medical work in Africa. He wrote Out of My Life and Thought and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. Sir William Osler (1849–1919), known to some as the father of internal medicine, was a respected physician and teacher. He was the author of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, used for decades as the bible of medicine. But his fame rested equally on his dedication as a mentor to young physicians. He often gave graduation addresses to medical students reminding them to maintain a life-long interest in continuous learning and to treat the whole patient not just the disease. Francis Weld Peabody (1881–1927) a teacher at Harvard who had written a book The Care of the Patient in which he discussed how older practitioners often complained that younger doctors’ mindsets were so often over-concerned with testing that they sometimes forgot about how to take care of the whole patient. Dr. Theodore E. Woodward (1914–2005) who was famous for his dedication to patients. Once during a snowstorm he hitched a ride on a snowplow to see his patients at the hospital. He is responsible for the epigram “when you hear hoof beats think of horses not zebras.” Dr Edmund Pellegrino, respected for his studies in bioethics. His interest in protecting the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship has particular importance in our current era when it seems that the art of medicine seems to be overshadowed by the business of medicine. He discusses this in his essay “The Commodification of Medical and Health Care.” Dr. Paul Farmer also is deeply concerned with the ethical ramifications of the commercialization that is overtaking the health system. He is devoted to improving public health on a worldwide scale. The author finishes up with some practical tips such as how to take a good history and how to avoid malpractice suits. He mentions the importance of finding a reasonable balance between our personal and professional lives. To offset the pressures that are sure to arise in caring for patients he reminds us as, Osler said, to look for the “poetry in life,” meaning to really try and understand the human side of the patients we treat. Throughout the book Colgan refers to doctors as “healers.” He suggests that healers are those who rise above the merely technical aspects of their craft and connect with patients in a special way—a way that respects their uniqueness and their human nature. It’s hard to describe in scientific terms what a healer is. As the author points out, most doctors know them when they see them. Edward J. Volpintesta, MD Bethe
