Overview

In this groundbreaking volume, David Schenck and Larry Churchill present the results of fifty interviews with practitioners identified by their peers as healers, exploring in depth the things that the best clinicians do. They focus on specific actions that exceptional healers perform to improve their relationships with their patients and, subsequently, improve their patients' overall health. The authors analyze the ritual structure and spiritual meaning of these healing skills, as well as their scientific basis, and offer a new, more holistic interpretation of the placebo effect. Recognizing that the best healers are also people who know how to care for themselves, the authors describe activities that these clinicians have chosen to promote wellness, wholeness and healing in their own lives. The final chapter explores the deep connections between the mastery of healing skills and the mastery of what the authors call the skills of ethics. They argue that ethics should be considered a healing art, alongside the art of medicine.

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9780190650599

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Reviews

The essential opinions about patients expressed by the physicians in Healers are ineluctably subjective; they are not measurable and cannot be made objective. To comprehend that is to realize also how imperative thoughtful subjectivity is not only to clinical medicine and bioethics but also to how persons live their lives generally. Understand that, and you will begin to be free of scientism outside of its rightful domain. I believe you will come away from these books with an increased appreciation of healing and a wider and more human view of ethics. * Hastings Center Report * The book powerfully shows how physicians' spiritual and physical dispositions contribute a great deal to the care they provide, showing the inseparability of personhood and excellence. Practitioners will find this a useful refresher about the things that really matter. Medical students and undergraduates who hope to be physicians will learn what they must do to become excellent practitioners... Recommended. * CHOICE *

The book powerfully shows how physicians' spiritual and physical dispositions contribute a great deal to the care they provide, showing the inseparability of personhood and excellence. Practitioners will find this a useful refresher about the things that really matter. Medical students and undergraduates who hope to be physicians will learn what they must do to become excellent practitioners... Recommended. CHOICE The essential opinions about patients expressed by the physicians in Healers are ineluctably subjective; they are not measurable and cannot be made objective. To comprehend that is to realize also how imperative thoughtful subjectivity is not only to clinical medicine and bioethics but also to how persons live their lives generally. Understand that, and you will begin to be free of scientism outside of its rightful domain. I believe you will come away from these books with an increased appreciation of healing and a wider and more human view of ethics. Hastings Center Report

Author Information

David Schenck is Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Larry Churchill is Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics at the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

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