The International Journal of Whole Person Care
Not a member yet
376 research outputs found
Sort by
Healing the Feelings and Feeling the Healing: Hypnotic Approaches in Cancer and Palliative Care
No full textThis workshop will focus on clinical demonstrations of hypnotic suggestion through metaphors for self-regulation improvements, pain relief, palliation of symptoms, and amelioration of hope in the face of advanced or progressive illness. These materials were designed (Néron and Handel, In Press) for health care professionals who use – or may decide to use – clinical hypnosis in their professional work with patients. The role of adjunctive hypnotic therapy in cancer care is to help manage distressing symptoms and to give the sufferer a sense of control via mind-body regulation. Physicians and health care professionals can integrate personalized hypnotic approaches in order to help patients regulate physiological functions, alleviate pain, enhance the release of tension, reframe hope, facilitate new levels of personal adjustments, and promote or restore healing spiritual experiences.The workshop will include case-based, video clip demonstrations to cover the following topic areas: a) addressing patients’ misconceptions about hypnosis, b) establishing appropriate clinical goals, c) using hypnotic techniques in different medical settings, d) developing quick ways of reaching a hypnotic state, e) teaching self-hypnosis, f) preparing for medical procedures, g) reframing hope, and h) promoting healing spiritual experiences.Objectives: Participants will be introduced to ways of: a) Integrating guided clinical hypnosis procedures at bedside and in several medical contexts. b) Empowering the sufferer by teaching him or her how to use self-hypnosis for symptom relief and for addressing their existential issues.ReferenceNéron, S., and Handel, D. Hypnotic Approaches in Cancer and Palliative Care. Quebec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, In Press
The International Centre for Communication in Healthcare: Creating Safer and More Compassionate Healthcare Systems around the World
No full textBackground: The role of communication in healthcare receives increasing attention, yet little research exists that brings together perspectives from interprofessional healthcare researchers and practitioners with linguists and communication specialists. The International Centre for Communication in Healthcare[1] is a response to increasing recognition of the central role of communication and relationships in the delivery of safe, effective and compassionate healthcare.Objective: To develop a worldwide, multidisciplinary collaborative of internationally recognized healthcare professionals and communication experts working together to translate research into education and practice to improve patient safety, communication and relationships in healthcare.Methods: The International Collaborative for Communication in Healthcare (a precursor to the Centre) began in 2010, and was founded at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in March 2011. We initiated research collaborations and presented colloquia, workshops and papers at international conferences.Results: The Centre, co-convened by PolyU and University of Technology, Sydney, was formally launched at PolyU in June 2013 with over 50 members from over 10 countries. The Centre is developing a strategic research agenda for communication in healthcare to improve the quality and safety of patient care, and to mobilize knowledge and expertise gained from research to guide teaching and implementation of communication skills and compassionate care in healthcare education and practice. In an early initiative in 2011, we created the International Charter for Human Values in Healthcare[2], a collaborative effort involving people, organizations and institutions around the world working together to restore core human values to healthcare. The values of the International Charter inform the Centre’s research, education and practice initiatives.Conclusions: Effective communication is increasingly recognized as integral to safe, effective, and compassionate healthcare. The International Centre for Communication in Healthcare brings together interdisciplinary researchers, educators and practitioners from diverse disciplines to explore and improve communication and relationships in healthcare settings around the world.References1. The International Centre for Communication in Healthcare. Hong Kong Polytechnic University and University of Technology, Sydney. http://icchweb.org2. The International Charter for Human Values in Healthcare. December 2, 2012. http://charterforhealthcarevalues.or
Stories at Work: Writing to Learn, Care, and Collaborate in Radiation Therapy
Get PDFNarrative writing has shown potential to foster skilled, compassionate care among health professionals. We describe the process and effects of a project that introduced experiential narrative writing to professionals and students at a large Canadian cancer centre. Four 90-minute introductory workshops in experiential narrative writing were offered to radiation therapy students (9), radiation therapists (28), and oncology nurses (1). These workshops were followed by an in-depth narrative writing course consisting of four 60-minute sessions. The course was offered twice with a total of 11 participants (all radiation therapists). Participants were prompted to write about their experiences, share their writing, and respond to each other’s writing. Writing was not focused on professional experiences. All sessions were led by an experienced facilitator and researcher. In order to describe the process and effects of these courses, we used a combination of observations, reflective writing, ongoing dialogue with participants, and follow-up interviews (8 radiation therapists and 3 students). We describe five “active elements” of the narrative writing sessions: stories at (but not about) work, challenge, trust, quality of engagement, and continuity. We then discuss perceived effects of the narrative writing sessions, which we have termed pleasure, perspective, community, presence, craft, and collective artwork. These findings suggest potential for narrative writing to support the work, well-being, and community of health professionals in radiation therapy
Person-Centered Care In Mental Health Education and Practice Through Arts-Informed Narrative Inquiry
No full textObjectives: We conceptualize person-centred care (PCC) as whole person care that is enacted through the relationship between caregivers and care-receivers. This understanding bridges education and practice, nursing students and nurses, and methodological approaches. The objective of our Associated Medical Services Phoenix Call to Caring funded research is to explore how students and nurses in mental health construct and enact person-centred care.Methods: Our participants include students and nurses in mental health education and practice. We meet with them in integrated groups of nurses and students. Our research process engages participants in four arts-informed narrative inquiry sessions: stories of giving and receiving PCC, use of metaphors to access tacit knowing, collages and mandalas to explore embodied experience of PCC. Our research is multi-method through the addition of pre and post caring scales to document changes in participant attitudes and behaviours. A follow-up telephone call three months after the fourth session provides an evaluation of the significance of this exploration to PCC in their practice.Results: Dimensions of enacting PCC are revealed including personal, regulatory, professional and institutional forces that shape students’ and nurses’ choice to be person-centred in their practice. Nurses and students increase self-awareness and critical thinking about the value and enactment of PCC in their practice, also shaping the healthcare environment. The significance of arts-informed narrative methods to illuminate knowledge construction is revealed.Conclusions: PCC includes the practitioner and student as knowledge maker, in partnership with a patient and family. PCC involves choosing how to be in relationship as a whole person as well as conceptualizing patients as whole persons. PCC involves practitioner self-awareness and courage to advocate for personal integrity of patients and self-as-caregiver. Arts-informed narrative inquiry provides nurses (established and emergent) processes for continuing reflection and professional development
The Caregiver’s Wandering: The Quest for Identity Integration in the Workplace Using Reflection, Talking Circles, and Creative Expression
No full textThese workshops are inspired by the observations of the author in the field of mental health services delivery. The way the caregiver’s role is interpreted is different between the caregiver and the management team - the clinician cannot imagine her professional commitment without considering personal values and motivations, whereas the employer considers personal motivations an impairment to professional effectiveness. This may explain the high rate of burnout for the practitioners working in already stressful conditions in healthcare. Could the reconciliation of personal and professional dimensions prevent this disavowal of human capital? Holistic art therapy proposes to integrate the divide, to repair the rupture often experienced by the caregiver in clinical practice. Furthermore the ethnopsychiatry approach helps to reintegrate bio-psychosocial and spiritual narratives to rebalance the power struggles of workplace which may undermine the professional’s performance and fundamental raison d’être. The caregiver can become whole, balancing interpersonal, interdisciplinary and intercultural dimensions in healthcare practices
Watch Over Me©: Therapeutic Conversations in Advanced Dementia
No full text“Watch over me” is a framework and strategies that clinicians can use in providing practical support and counseling to patients with dementia and their families. This framework is intended to address the needs and experiences of simultaneous trajectories of illness experienced by people with dementia and their family caregivers. These experiences can be described through the stages of dementia for the person with the disease and corresponding stages in the family’s journey. Each individual’s and family’s experiences are unique, yet these intentionally simplified schemas provide a context through which to address predictable problems and decisions regarding matters of physical health, living situation and caregiver needs and well being.Watch Over Me builds on trust between each patient and his or her caregivers, including the person’s chosen proxy decision-makers. It also builds on and fosters trust between a patient and family and the patient’s doctor. Watch Over Me brings the trusting, covenantal values within loving relationships into the processes of planning and caring. This approach complements and balances the contractual values that are protective or defensive and are embedded in medical ethics and advance directives.Communication with patients and families living with dementia is sometimes difficult and may be uncomfortable for physicians and other professional health care providers, yet it is always valued by patients and families and very often helpful in clarifying people’s perspective and priorities, thereby informing current plans of care. This presentation will offer practical therapeutic communication strategies to facilitate advance care planning conversations with patients and families as a person with dementia progresses to advance
Narrative Reflective Process: A Means to Whole Person Research Cluster Formation
No full textObjectives: As nursing faculty members of Health and Illness research cluster our focus is on promoting humanistic practices, such as person-centered care, for individuals and their families living with illness and its consequences. In keeping with this holistic focus we wanted to explore a non-traditional approach to building a productive professional collaboration.Methods: In the early stages of our research cluster formation, we chose to engage in Schwind’s Narrative Reflective Process (NRP), a creative self-expression activity that is informed by the Connelly and Clandinin’s Narrative Inquiry research approach. Creative activities included storytelling, metaphors and drawing. We began the process by working in pairs, telling stories of our research experiences, both positive and negative. We then drew images that metaphorically represented each of these. Following, we described our images to the cluster group, while considering common narrative threads. The process ended by the group envisioning our interpretation of our collaborative cluster work. Throughout the year, our cluster met on a regular basis working on our common interest of person-centred care. One year later, we recreated our images to see how the view of our collaborative cluster work had evolved. This time we chose to create one large image together.Results: We found that our creative experiential activities opened possibilities for trust and created a safe space for research cluster members to share their developing ideas. We felt that by sharing our personal experiences through drawings and metaphors allowed us to connect with one another as whole persons. It allowed us to recognize that we are more than just our professional roles.Conclusions: Through the creative self-expression of NRP we engaged the research cluster members as whole persons. As a result, the cohesion, trust and collaboration resulted in increased research creativity and productivity, which would not have been possible to create alone
Making Sense of Collaborative Practices: Practice as a Social and Scientific Phenomenon
No full textWorkshop Description (objectives, methods, results, conclusions): The concept of “practice” has received little attention in healthcare literature. This is an important oversight as practitioners tend to equate the dominant scientific discourse with practice. This covers over the social nature of individual and team-based practices. Social theorists argue that human nature is ‘helplessly’ social and interdependent. This failure to recognize the social construction of knowledge and knowing influences our ability to engage in collaborative practice and provide whole person care. We cannot see where “hidden practices” (the practice equivalent to 'hidden curriculum') influence what we can see and what remains hidden, what we can say and what we must keep silent about, or which actions are encouraged and which are constrained. We will explore the paradox of the co-existence of rational science and social constructionist views of knowledge and knowing and propose that practices are complex, responsive, processes of relating that are informed by, and in turn, challenge and further inform science. Using a mix of presentation, personal reflection, and case studies in small groups, this 90 minute workshop we will explore the social nature of practice, the theory/practice (science/experience) paradox, and consider how this “two-eyed” understanding could facilitate the provision of whole person care.Specific Objectives: Participants will be able to:1. Define collaborative practice2. Elaborate and understand their own experience of collaborative practice3. Differentiate between social and scientific paradigms and explain the differences and implications4. Explain the concept and implications of the practices of particular communities and of first- and second-order breakdowns5. Understand the nature of collaboration and distinguish it from included and related concepts of communication, coordination, cooperation, and co-location6. Articulate personal definitions of and strategies for and identify personal commitments to collaborative practice related to whole person care
Bringing Our Whole Person to Whole Person Care: Fostering Reflective Capacity with Interactive Reflective Writing in Health Professions Education
No full textReflective learning and practice foster personal, professional, and interprofessional identity development within health professions education to encourage humanistic, competent patient care. Reflection on experience nurtures mindful presence and adaptive expertise/”practical wisdom,” enabling the health care professional to recognize and address patients’ and families’ emotional, psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual needs for optimizing whole person care (WPC). By heightening awareness of strengths, values, biases, and/or limitations, reflection also helps the provider bring more of his/her “whole person” to WPC, strengthening the provider-patient therapeutic relationship (reciprocity for healing). The use of reflective writing (RW) to augment reflective practice is well documented. RW in the small group setting fosters narrative competence (hearing/responding to a patient’s story, awareness of one’s own stories), self-assessment, moral sensitivity, empathy, emotional processing, and provider well-being. At Alpert Med, we have implemented an “interactive reflective writing” (IRW) paradigm of guided individualized feedback from interdisciplinary faculty to students’ RW in a Doctoring course and Family Medicine clerkship (with small group peer-based narrative sharing and collaborative feedback). Frameworks for enhancing educational value of feedback (BEGAN and REFLECT-reflective level evaluation rubric) were developed, incorporated into student and faculty guides, and applied in faculty development.INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES: 1) Participants will be familiarized with constructs of reflective learning/practice and IRW, 2) Participants will apply BEGAN and REFLECT to a student’s reflective essay as exemplar, 3) Participants will engage in interactive dialogue with medical student presenters on positive learning outcomes of IRW for WPC 4) Participants will consider and share merits, limitations, and possible utility of presented curricula/evaluative tools for their settings. FORMAT/ACTIVITIES:1. Didactic - Reflective Learning/Practice for WPC2. Participants provide feedback to student’s RW3. Discussion4. Introduce BEGAN/REFLECT frameworks5. Participants re-craft feedback with frameworks/Discuss6. Student/faculty presenters share experiences of IRW pedagogy for fostering reflection and WPC7. Wrap-up/Q and A