Whole Person Care

A ground-breaking new volume and the first of its kind to concisely outline and explicate the emerging field of whole person care process, Whole Person Care: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century organizes the disparate strains of literature on the topic. It does so by clarifying the concept of 'whole person' and also by outlining the challenges and opportunities that death anxiety poses to the practice of whole person care. Whole person care seeks to study, understand and promote the role of health care in relieving suffering and promoting healing in acute and chronic illness as a complement to the disease focus of biomedicine. The focus is on the whole person -- physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. Using concise, easy-to-read language, the early chapters offer practitioners a thorough understanding of the concepts, skills and tools necessary for the practice of whole person care from a clinician-patient interaction standpoint, while the last two chapters review the myriad implications of whole person care for medical practice. An invaluable resource for all areas of medical practice and for practitioners at all stages of development, from medical students to physicians and allied health providers with many years of experience, Whole Person Care: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century will have a profound impact on western medical practice in North America and elsewhere.

This book argues persuasively and passionately that patient care is best when the patient’s healing journey is as good as it can possibly be. That means the patient as a Whole Person – the self in all its physiological, emotional, social and even spiritual dimensions – should receive truly comprehensive patient-centered care. In Whole Person Care: Transforming Healthcare, the author, an expert in whole person care theory and practice, outlines the background of whole person care, explains and illustrates the key ideas, puts the growing movement of whole person care in the context of other recent developments in healthcare, and explores the implications of whole person care for individual practitioners, healthcare teams, and the organization of healthcare at the institutional and systems level. In addition, the author provides a compelling, coherent narrative, rich with clinical examples and vignettes, that clarifies for physicians, medical students and healthcare administrators the meaning of whole person care and its implications for the future of medical practice. An invaluable resource for all clinicians and personnel concerned with managing patients with acute and chronic illness, Whole Person Care: Transforming Healthcare is a major addition to the literature and a must-read for health practitioners and health administrators at every level.

Integrated Care for the Traumatized puts forth a model for the future of behavioral health focused on health care integration and the importance of the Whole Person Approach (WPA) in guiding the integration. This book fills a void applying the WPA integration to the traumatized that enables the reader to learn from experienced trauma practitioners on how to assess and treat trauma as humanely and compassionately as possible. This approach of expanding the possibilities of behavioral health by centering upon the whole person is an old idea that is emerging as a modern solution to over specialized practices. Among other things this WPA approach, completed with spirituality, psychology, medicine, social work, and psychiatry, helps traumatized and their families function in the social environment. The book has four sections: Foundations, Interventions for Individuals, Interventions for Communities, and Future of Integrative Care for the Traumatized. Each chapter discusses the importance of working within an integrative and WP approach, with descriptions of integrative models, research evidence and applications that are already working. These chapters can help students, families, and seasoned professionals to improve upon and expand their practice with the traumatized in both the individual and community contexts.

This book builds on the person-centred medicine movement to promote a shift in the philosophy of care of distress. It discusses the vital importance of whole person health, healing and growth. Developing a new transdisciplinary concept of sense of safety, this book argues that the whole person needs to be understood within their context and relationships and explores the appraisal and coping systems that are part of health. Using clinical vignettes to illustrate her argument, Lynch draws on an understanding of attachment, and trauma-informed approaches to life story and counsels against an over-reliance on symptom-based fragmentation of body and mind. Integrating literature from social determinants of health, psychology, psychotherapy, education and the social sciences with new research from the fields of immunology, endocrinology and neurology, this broad-ranging book is relevant to all those with an interest in person-centred healthcare, including academics and practitioners from medicine, nursing, mental health and public health.

In the last fifteen years, the field of palliative care has experienced a surge in interest in spirituality as an important aspect of caring for seriously ill and dying patients. While spirituality has been generally recognized as an essential dimension of palliative care, uniformity of spiritual care practice has been lacking across health care settings due to factors like varying understandings and definitions of spirituality, lack of resources and practical tools, and limited professional education and training in spiritual care. In order to address these shortcomings, more than forty spiritual and palliative care experts gathered for a national conference to discuss guidelines for incorporating spirituality into palliative care. Their consensus findings form the basis of Making Health Care Whole. This important new resource provides much-needed definitions and charts a common language for addressing spiritual care across the disciplines of medicine, nursing, social work, chaplaincy, psychology, and other groups. It presents models of spiritual care that are broad and inclusive, and provides tools for screening, assessment, care planning, and interventions. This book also advocates a team approach to spiritual care, and specifies the roles of each professional on the team. Serving as both a scholarly review of the field as well as a practical resource with specific recommendations to improve spiritual care in clinical practice, Making Health Care Whole will benefit hospices and palliative care programs in hospitals, home care services, and long-term care services. It will also be a valuable addition to the curriculum at seminaries, schools of theology, and medical and nursing schools.

Cancer care today often provides state-of-the-science biomedical treatment, but fails to address the psychological and social (psychosocial) problems associated with the illness. This failure can compromise the effectiveness of health care and thereby adversely affect the health of cancer patients. Psychological and social problems created or exacerbated by cancer-including depression and other emotional problems; lack of information or skills needed to manage the illness; lack of transportation or other resources; and disruptions in work, school, and family life-cause additional suffering, weaken adherence to prescribed treatments, and threaten patients' return to health. Today, it is not possible to deliver high-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients' psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient recommends actions that oncology providers, health policy makers, educators, health insurers, health planners, researchers and research sponsors, and consumer advocates should undertake to ensure that this standard is met.

This open access book is a unique resource for health professionals who are interested in understanding the philosophical foundations of their daily practice. It provides tools for untangling the motivations and rationality behind the way medicine and healthcare is studied, evaluated and practiced. In particular, it illustrates the impact that thinking about causation, complexity and evidence has on the clinical encounter. The book shows how medicine is grounded in philosophical assumptions that could at least be challenged. By engaging with ideas that have shaped the medical profession, clinicians are empowered to actively take part in setting the premises for their own practice and knowledge development. Written in an engaging and accessible style, with contributions from experienced clinicians, this book presents a new philosophical framework that takes causal complexity, individual variation and medical uniqueness as default expectations for health and illness.

The Whole-Person Workplace helps you craft a custom-fit solution that will unlock your workplace's potential by valuing your employees as whole people.

A quick look at the table of contents will show that Health for the Whole Person is easily the most comprehensive book available on holistic approaches to health. This authoritative sourcebook will answer your questions about alternative health practices and direct you to the best additional information on such topics as homeopathic medicine, biofeedback, chiropractic, natural childbirth, herbal medicines, psychic healing, and nutrition therapy. - Back cover.

The World Health Organization defines the social determinants of health as "the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life." These forces and systems include economic policies, development agendas, cultural and social norms, social policies, and political systems. In an era of pronounced human migration, changing demographics, and growing financial gaps between rich and poor, a fundamental understanding of how the conditions and circumstances in which individuals and populations exist affect mental and physical health is imperative. Educating health professionals about the social determinants of health generates awareness among those professionals about the potential root causes of ill health and the importance of addressing them in and with communities, contributing to more effective strategies for improving health and health care for underserved individuals, communities, and populations. Recently, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop to develop a high-level framework for such health professional education. A Framework for Educating Health Professionals to Address the Social Determinants of Health also puts forth a conceptual model for the framework's use with the goal of helping stakeholder groups envision ways in which organizations, education, and communities can come together to address health inequalities.