Overview

Dr. Michael Kearney demonstrates in this book that while the medical model has undoubted strengths in easing pain, it is limited in its ability to alleviate the psychological and spiritual suffering that often accompanies terminal illness. Complementing physical treatment with such depth approaches as dreamwork, poetry, divination, and a revitalized connection with nature, Kearney, a palliative care specialist, allows us to begin to integrate scientific and psychological metaphors. We may thereby forge a more comprehensive and holistic response to the greatest challenges we all have to face: suffering and dying. Through imaginative re-envisionings of the mythology and rites of ancient Greek Asklepian healing, Kearney helps us discover a way of recognizing and caring for the soul in its most critical moments and proposes a new model for the healing of suffering which draws on the best practices of both the medical and Asklepian traditions.

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9781228670589

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This book deserves a wide readership. Michael Kearney is taking us to new depths; new heights. He takes us beyond the usual holistic care rhetoric. He takes us into uncharted territory and we find ourselves thankful for a guide who so uniquely combines breadth of vision, insight, sensitivity and humility, not to mention clarity of thought and expression --Balfour Mount, Eric M. Flanders Professor of Palliative Medicine (retired), McGill University, Montreal

Author Information

Michael Kearney, M.D., has spent over 25 years working as a physician in end-of-life care. He trained and worked at St. Christopher's Hospice in London with Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, and subsequently worked for many years as Medical Director of Our Lady's Hospice in Dublin, and later with Professor Balfour Mount at McGill University in Montreal. He is currently a Medical Director of the Palliative Care Service at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and an Associate Medical Director at Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care, also in Santa Barbara. He also acts as medical director to the Anam Cara Project for Compassionate Companionship in Life and Death in Bend, Oregon.

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