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Ch' 18: The Search for Meaning in Modern Medicine

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patients coming to terms with their illness; therapies; healing or decline; ... selections from Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Ch' 18: The Search for Meaning in Modern Medicine


1
Ch. 18 The Search for Meaningin Modern Medicine
  • Rels 120
  • 27 oct 2006

2
Search for Meaning
  • According to David Kinsley
  • healing involves the attempt to frame illness and
    death in a meaningful framework
  • related to morality, religious beliefs, and
    spiritual experience of ill person
  • healing involves understanding the illness
  • modern medicine often shuns this desire to
    understand and respond to illness death
  • irrelevant to disease and healing processes

3
Health Care Professionals
  • Many doctors and nurses do not believe that
    spiritual care is part of medicine.
  • perhaps relevant for social workers, counsellors,
    clergy, pastoral care workers
  • very unhelpful if the principle understanding is
    to assign blame to the sick person for their
    illness
  • but no other meaningful framework is considered
    or explored
  • exceptions among both doctors and nurses

4
Experience of Illness
  • But people who are ill do ask these questions
  • Why me?
  • Why am I ill?
  • What does this illness mean in and for my life?
  • What will it mean for my family and friends?
  • What becomes important for me now?
  • What seems no longer important?
  • How will I live a meaningful life while I am sick?

5
PathographiesThe Voice of the Patient
  • Kinsley sees pathographies within this context
  • patients coming to terms with their illness
    therapies healing or decline recovering or
    accommodation or dying
  • pathographies allow us to view the disease,
    healing, and dying processes from the patients
    point of view
  • they give us the voice of the patient
  • they focus on the urgent need to make sense out
    of illness

6
Chaos to Meaning
  • people experience illness as chaotic,
    destructive, terrifying
  • it often instigates a crisis in the persons life
  • for some, it will lead to a renewal in their own
    religious tradition, with its themes and images
  • for others, it leads to a rejection of their
    religious faith and beliefs
  • for still others, the search for meaning lies
    outside of traditional religions
  • but many patients need to find meaning

7
Experiencing Illness
  • the perspective of a family member
  • the perspective of the person who is ill
  • reflections on being ill
  • reflections on living life fully
  • reflections on preparing to die
  • selections from Tuesdays with Morrie An old man,
    a young man, and lifes greatest lesson, by Mitch
    Albom

8
Reflections on Readings
  • Jot down reflections
  • of person witnessing the illness and/or death of
    another
  • of person who is ill
  • regarding living life
  • regarding dying
  • regarding lifes meaning, goals, activities
  • themes, beliefs, spirituality
  • anything that seems important to you
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