Whole Person Care

Abstract

(from the chapter) This chapter discusses whole person care using seriously ill and dying patients' experience for examples. Pioneering palliative care physicians Balfour Mount and Michael Kearney noticed an interesting phenomenon in their practice. The improvement they often saw in dying patients' quality of life did not appear to depend on control of disease. Just days before a particular patient died he married his fiancee and said goodbye to those he loved, observing, 'This last year has been the best year of my life'". The key change according to the patient was a shift from an external focus in his life to an internal focus. That made all the difference to him. It turns out that patient's experience was not unique, and Mount and Kearney saw this phenomenon many times in their practice. They gave the title healng to this ability of people to move from suffering to a sense of integrity and wholeness often independently of objective improvement. And while this was an innate capacity of people, the palliative care that these dying patients were receiving appeared to promote this process. They realized that the facilitation of healng was not a specific characteristic of palliative care but that they were practicing an ancient part of the healthcare mandate that is relevant at all stages of illness. They suggested that this increasingly forgotten aspect of medicine needs to be reintegrated with the powerful curative aspects of modern medicine to provide the best care possible to people seeking a doctor's help. This combination of curing and healing is whole person care, the subject of this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)