Medicine Of The Person

Based on the principle of 'medicine of the person', an attitude that embeds personal relationships and ethics in medical practice, this text considers the ideas of Paul Tournier, an influential figure whose thinking has had a substantial impact on the spiritual and psychosocial aspects of routine patient care.

Medicine of the Person is an international, multi-faith exploration of the demonstrable need to integrate the scientific basis of healthcare more fully with spiritual, religious and ethical values. Informed by the principle of 'medicine of the person', the contributors argue for a medical practice which takes account of personal relationships, spirituality, ethics and theology in keeping with the ideas and beliefs of Paul Tournier, an influential Swiss general practitioner whose thinking has had a substantial impact on routine patient care relevant to national health services. Bridging the gap between the basic sciences and faith traditions, the contributors discuss notions of personhood in different faiths and its consideration in spirituality and mental health issues, general practice issues, public health, home care for the elderly and neuroscience. This volume offers a broad spectrum of approaches to the needs of patients and is a key text for students of the health disciplines, and practitioners and managers in these fields.

A renowned diagnostician shares stories of his patients and explores the importance of the human factor in medicine. In The Art of Medicine, Toronto Western Hospital’s internist Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong draws on his vast dossier of personal cases and five decades as a clinician to examine the core principles of a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment. While HPK, as he is fondly known, recognizes and applauds the many invaluable innovations in medical technology, he makes the point that as disease and its management grow increasingly complex, physicians must learn to develop an arsenal of more basic skills, actively using the arts of seeing, hearing, palpation, empathy, and advocacy to provide a more humane and holistic form of care. Aimed at medical practitioners, aspiring doctors, or anyone interested in health and medicine, this book also contains interviews with more than a dozen of HPK’s patients, as well as short essays that explore the thinking of his professional colleagues on the art of medicine.

This book probes the ethical structure of contemporary medicine in an argument accessible to lay readers, healthcare professionals, and ethicists alike.

Asks whether personalised medicine is superior to 'one-size-fits-all' treatment. Does it elevate individual choice above the common good?

Patient-Centered Medicine: A Human Experience emphasizes the health professional's role in caring for patients as unique individuals by focusing on the patients' psychological and social realities as well as their biological needs. The book concerns itself with caring for the whole patient, and outlines the basic principles involved in developing a biopsychosocial approach to medical practice. This is a volume of guidelines that will help medical students and clinicians develop and master basic attitudes and skills essential to providing empathic and comprehensive medical care. As Norman Cousins writes in the foreword, 'The authors understand and repeatedly demonstrate in this book, that the patient-physician relationship is a powerful, sometimes mysterious, frequently healing interaction between human beings. It is the person of the doctor and the presence of the doctor-just as much and frequently more than-what the doctor does that creates an environment for healing. The physician represents restoration. The physician holds the lifeline.' Since the book's original publication by University Park Press in 1984, greater awareness and acceptance of the biopsychosocial model has occurred, and medical schools are now working to fully integrate psychosocial education into the clinical curriculum.

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.