Feminists Healing Ethics

The field of ethics is enjoying a much-needed renaissance. Traditional theories and approaches are appropriately coming under fire, although not every new idea will stand time's test. Feminist thinking suggests that we at least emphasize the importance of women and their interests, focus on issues specially affecting women, rethink fundamental assumptions, incorporate feminist insights and conclusions from other areas, and be consistent with respect to our concerns about equality by paying attention to race and class.     

Health,Healing and Wholeness in Frail Elderly People

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationship between health, healing and wholeness in a group of twenty frail older residents of nursing homes, using in-depth interviews. While the participants in this study were all frail and lived with a number of disabilities, they demonstrated signs of transcendence in their responses to their disabilities. While independent living older adults in a previous study had all expressed fears of future vulnerability, only 45% of these nursing home residents said they had fears. Failure to thrive is discussed as one area of concern for frail older people, noting that this may stem from a lack of nourishment of the soul. Pastoral care is described as a multidisciplinary intervention for these residents, forming part of their wholistic care.     

Health and Healing: Spiritual, Pharmaceutical, and Mechanical Medicine

Modern medical practice is identified as a relatively recent way of approaching human ill health in the wide scope of how people have addressed sickness throughout history and across a wide range of cultures. The ideological biases of medical or “allopathic” (disease as “other” or “outsider”) practice are identified and grafted onto other perspectives on how people not engaged in modern medicine have achieved healing and health. Alternative forms of healing and health open a consideration of ethnomedicine, many forms of which are unknown and, hence, untested by modern medical research. Ethnomedicine the world over and throughout human history has displayed unique spiritual (vitalism), pharmaceutical (herbs/drugs), and mechanical (manipulation/surgery) approaches to treating illness. The argument is that modern allopathic medicine would do well to consider such “world medicine” as having valuable alternative and complementary therapies, the use of which could enhance contemporary medical advice and practice.     

Child Welfare Versus Parental Autonomy: Medical Ethics,The Law,and Faith-Based Healing

Over the past three decades more than 200 children have died in the U.S. of treatable illnesses as a result of their parents relying on spiritual healing rather than conventional medical treatment. Thirty-nine states have laws that protect parents from criminal prosecution when their children die as a result of not receiving medical care. As physicians and citizens, we must choose between protecting the welfare of children and maintaining respect for the rights of parents to practice the religion of their choice and to make important decisions for their children. In order to make and defend such choices, it is essential that we as health care professionals understand the history and background of such practices and the legal aspects of previous cases, as well as formulate an ethical construct by which to begin a dialogue with the religious communities and others who share similar beliefs about spiritual healing. In this paper, we provide a framework for these requirements.     

Cultural Embeddedness of Health,Illness and Healing: Prospects for Integrating Indigenous and Western Healing Practices

Culture influences conceptualizations about illness, health and healthcare. In this article we argue that Western-oriented health care models have limited success when applied to health conditions of people of non-Western cultures and contend that culture is an important factor in health, illness and healing. We present two cultural modes of illness and healing to illustrate that many health conditions are meaningful and can be effectively managed with consideration of the cultural contexts of the communities concerned. We illustrate, by case examples, how these cultural conceptualisations influence the treatment of illness in three different cultural settings. In addition, we identify some of the key challenges to integrating traditional healing into counselling and psychotherapy. Integration of different cultural healthcare models is a best practice in comprehensive context sensitive delivery of healthcare.     

斯多亚学派伦理学:灵魂的治疗术

斯多亚学派认为人的激情如悲伤、恐惧、欲望、快乐是一种心灵的剧烈运动,是超越理性的冲动,因而是灵魂疾病.真正好(善)的东西是德性,德性是幸福本身,是有用的.人是自然的一部分.人要拥有德性,就必须运用自己的理性,合乎自然而生活.只有顺从自然的必然性,人的灵魂才能因此宁静而健康.     

卫生保健政策与医学伦理学

卫生保健政策是卫生资源、价值目标和伦理原则三者的结合。医学伦理学是卫生政策的重要基础。当代卫生事业的特点,卫生保健服务面临的挑战以及医学伦理主体与客体的变化,决定了医学伦理学在当代卫生保健政策中的特殊意义。在医学面临全民保健的阶段,一个科学的符合人民健康利益的卫生保健政策是不言而喻的。摆脱当前卫生政策面临的困难,要求必须在医学伦理学方面作出正确的选择。     

柏拉图的神

对于柏拉图的哲学,国内学界研究颇多,但是其神学思想一直没有得到应有的重视①。实际上,作为西方哲学与宗教神学思想的重要源头,柏拉图的哲学和他的有神论是密不可分的。柏拉图的有神论从哲学和宗教神话两个方面受到前苏格拉底时期希腊思想的影响。几乎此前的所有哲人都以各自不同的方式涉及到了神的概念和问题;宗教方面主要是来自于希腊神话的崇拜奥林匹斯神的流行宗教。以及宣扬灵魂轮回和禁欲主义的俄耳甫斯教及相关的狄奥尼索斯崇拜。由于篇幅所限,柏拉图所受到的影响（以及他对后世的影响）只能另文刊出。本文将直接探讨柏拉图对话中的神学思想、本文的基本观点,是从理念论的角度,按照与理念的内在关系来探讨、理解柏拉图的有神论,即“理念有神论”（Ｉｄｅａｌ Ｔｈｅｉｓｍ）,并视之为柏拉图神学的实质。     

Ethics and Culture in Mental Health Care

This article examines the complex relationship between culture, values, and ethics in mental health care. Cultural competence is a practical, concrete demonstration of the ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence (doing good), nonmaleficence (not doing harm), and justice (treating people fairly)—the cornerstones of modern ethical codes for the health professions. Five clinical cases are presented to illustrate the range of ethical issues faced by mental health clinicians working in a multicultural environment, including issues of therapeutic boundaries, diagnosis, treatment choice, confidentiality and informed consent, and the just distribution of limited health care resources.     

流行病学实践与研究相关的伦理学视角与思考

随着社会的发展,公共卫生领域的伦理学问题不断显露,有必要对其重新审视。探讨了目前在公共卫生领域流行病学实践与研究中存在和涉及到的一些伦理问题,有传染病报告、隔离、免疫规划、艾滋病防治、传染病应急机制、流行病学调查和试验研究等,并就公共卫生领域中的伦理实践原则进行了概括。     

The Health Professional Ethics Rubric: Practical Assessment in Ethics Education for Health Professional Schools

A barrier to the development and refinement of ethics education in and across health professional schools is that there is not an agreed upon instrument or method for assessment in ethics education. The most widely used ethics education assessment instrument is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) I & II. This instrument is not specific to the health professions. But it has been modified for use in, and influenced the development of other instruments in, the health professions. The DIT contains certain philosophical assumptions (??Kohlbergian?? or ??neo-Kohlbergian??) that have been criticized in recent years. It is also expensive for large institutions to use. The purpose of this article is to offer a rubric??which the authors have named the Health Professional Ethics Rubric??for the assessment of several learning outcomes related to ethics education in health science centers. This rubric is not open to the same philosophical critiques as the DIT and other such instruments. This rubric is also practical to use. This article includes the rubric being advocated, which was developed by faculty and administrators at a large academic health science center as a part of a campus-wide ethics education initiative. The process of developing the rubric is described, as well as certain limitations and plans for revision.