About the Book
The need for caring has always been part of the human condition. It consists of a wide range of responses to our vulnerabilities - compassion, comfort, empathy, sympathy, kindness, tenderness, listening, support, and being there. Whether provided by families, friends, communities, or health professionals, caring helps us to bear pain, suffering and disability, and to regain our physical, psychological and social functioning. Yet, in recent decades, changes in the organization, financing and delivery of health care, the education of health professionals and the nature of family and community life have eroded our capacities to be caring. In this work, Leighton E. Cluff, MD, and Robert H. Binstock, PhD, bring together experts to address the importance of caring, the reasons that it has eroded, and measures that can strengthen caring as provided by health professionals, families, communities, and society. The first section of the book reviews the elements of caring and the populations in need of it.
The second section portrays the historical changes in medical practice and education that have undermined caring, and the constraints on caring in institutional settings, in homes and other community-based settings, and on caring provided by voluntary organizations. It also delineates the challenges to be met if the art of caring is to be improved in contemporary society. The final section puts forward a model for appraising the success of caring, as well as an analysis of the ways in which the United States is and is not a caring society with respect to the health of its people. The book should be of interest to health care professionals, families, policy makers and researchers in health policy, gerontology, medical sociology and biomedical ethics. It could also serve as a primary or secondary text in schools of medicine, nursing, public health, allied health professions, and social work.
Table of Contents:
Contents: I Caring and the Populations in Need of It Our Need for Caring: Vulnerability and Illness Who Needs Caring? Caring and Mental Illness II The Provision of Caring A History of Caring in Medicine Forces Affecting Caring by Physicians Caring and Medical Education Caring in Institutional Settings Home and Community-Based Care: Toward a Caring Paradigm Caring and Community-Based Voluntary Organizations III Assessments of Caring Appraising the Success of Caring The Politics of Caring
About the Author :
Leighton E. Cluff, M.D., is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida College of Medicine and former president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Robert H. Binstock, Ph.D., is a professor of Aging, Health, and Society at Case Western Reserve University. They are co-editors, with Otto von Mering, of The Future of Long-Term Care, also available from Johns Hopkins.
Review :
The text is chock full of the thoughts of some of America's leading experts on the caring side of health care. This book should be read by any health care professional with an interest in this dimension of health care and is a must read for the medical community. A marvelous text. -- Joseph A. LiebermanIII, M.D.M.P.H. Journal of the American Medical Association On the whole, this volume deepens our understanding and appreciation of the importance of caring for all who are in need of personal attention and assistance when ill and disabled. The contributors seem to have given much thought to their chapters, weaving together personal stories, clinical experiences, research findings, and proposals for change. -- Else M. Kiefer Health Progress A remarkable broad and well-integrated package of philosophy and fact, a valuable and compact resource for health care professionals, as well as legislators and social scientists. -- John A. Benson, Jr., M.D. Pharos
