The healing of persons (médecine de la personne): reflections on Paul Tournier's contribution to person-centred medicine

The development of Paul Tournier's médecine de la personne as a relational body/mind/spirit approach to healthcare provision is outlined in this paper. His holistic understanding of the nature of the person may assist psychiatrists, and other health professionals, to reintegrate the psychosocial/transcultural and neurosciences, and to develop the healing relationship with patients that is central to person-centred medicine.

Considerations for psychedelic therapists when working with Native American people and communities

Although Native American communities are unique in their beliefs, traditions, and languages, there are some fundamental common belief systems shared by most Native American cultures. Therapists and other practitioners engaging in a healing relationship with Native Peoples should be aware of these fundamental aspects of the Native American culture. This includes trust/respect, confidentiality outside of the context therapeutic setting, culturally based therapy that is inclusive of Native American traditions, and culture, and making efforts to gain an understanding of the culture with which one will be interacting.

Illness Narratives in Practice: Potentials and Challenges of Using Narratives in Health-related Contexts

Illness narratives, patients’ stories about their experiences of illness, have gained a reputation as a scientific domain in medicine in the last thirty years. Patients’ stories about living with an illness, diagnostic procedures and treatments, encounters with medical institutions and its impact on their private and social life have been considered as an important access to their meaning-making and coping endeavours. They also play an important role in doctor-patient communication and the development of a healing relationship. This book aims at sensitizing professionals who use illness narratives in the field of medicine for their problems, challenges, and chances. In what ways should scholars of narratives respond to such uses? We argue that the use of narratives in applied contexts raises many questions about what kind of tools they are and what epistemological foundations, communicational properties and pragmatic effects they comprise when they are shifted from research material to clinical or educational and instructive instruments in various domains. This raises ethical concern and reflections. The book brings together scholars from various disciplines across clinical and theoretical fields. They give impressive examples how illness narratives can be used in many practical domains, and reflect on the chances as well as on the methodological or epistemological assumptions and challenges which are inevitably connected with the use of narratives as clinical, educational, or informative tools.

Psychosocial Care of Cancer Survivors

Psychosocial Care of Cancer Survivors: A Clinician’s Guide and Workbook for Providing Wholehearted Care is a clinical resource written for healthcare practitioners with the goal of helping them enhance communication with both patients and colleagues. It addresses questions of how to bring a humanistic approach and quality attention to the growing needs of patients in the post-treatment phase of a cancer diagnosis. As a workbook, it is both a guide and an applicable resource for daily clinical practice. It provides a needed structure for clinicians to help them reconnect with the meaningful aspects of their work. Part I focuses on skillful means for providing humanistic, person-centered care. Part II offers clinicians pragmatic structures and methods they can start using with patients right away and provides a humanistic clinical framework that benefits them both personally and professionally: clinical skills vital to forming healing clinical relationships (e.g., the four C’s of communication: communication, curiosity, concern, conversation; communication tools to enhance effective collaboration, such as personal and professional boundaries, the essentials of a healing relationship, stages of the clinical interview, collegial collaboration; exercises designed for personal reflection and the implementation of the clinical skills and communication tools mentioned; and useful practices and solutions to increase the efficacy of and satisfaction with their work.