Searching for meaning at the end of life
by Xavier Symons | 21 May 2016 |
Researchers from Australia and the UK have called for greater attention to be paid to ‘spiritual care’ in the treatment of elderly patients.
‘Spiritual care’ – care for, roughly speaking, the sense of identity, meaning, purpose and self-value of a patient – has been receiving increased attention in medical literature and clinical practice. Healthcare professionals are now calling on governments to reform ‘utilitarian’ healthcare systems to accommodate for the provision of therapies and services associated with spiritual care.
Writing for The Conversation, psychiatrists John Wattis and Stephen Curran of the University of Huddersfield discussed the need for clinicians to provide holistic treatment for elderly patients:
“The technical and the interpersonal aspects of clinical care should go together. Being prepared to assess spiritual need and deal with it – or signpost the patient to those who can help – should be part of good medical practice.”They suggested that medical practitioners are increasingly prevented from providing adequate spiritual care to patients due to an obsession with efficiency:
“At the moment health and social care are under enormous pressure to become ever more “efficient”. Time spent with a patient or client is easy to measure – but the quality of the care offered may be reduced if workers are too rushed and stressed…We need a health and social care system that is motivated by a spirit of compassion and not by a spirit of fear…Human beings should not be treated as though they are machines and that mechanical repair is all that is needed.”University of Melbourne aged care researchers Colleen Doyle and David Jackson expressed similar concerns. Doyle and Jackson criticised the often pragmatic approach to patient treatment in US, UK and Australian hospitals:
“Our reductionist health care model is not set up to support people in this way. Slowing down to address existential questions does not easily reconcile with frontline staff’s poverty of time…They lauded new guidelines developed in Australia for the provision of adequate spiritual care:
“…the development of new spiritual care guidelines brings us one step closer to supporting a meaningful existence right up to death.”
Twelve years ago, political scientist Francis Fukuyama described transhumanism as “the world’s most dangerous idea”. In 2004, that sounded a bit daft -- almost no one had ever heard of the idea. For many people it still does, but now transhumanism is going mainstream.
Movies are being made about transhumanist themes; newspapers like the Washington Post are running feature articles on it; and a transhumanist is running for US President. It is indeed dangerous. As Fukuyama said:
The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnology's tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.
Just a reminder: please consider a donation to keep BioEdge afloat. We need to raise $15,000 this year. Next week will be our final appeal letter.
http://www.bioedge.org/
http://www.bioedge.org/
Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge
| This week in BioEdge | |
by Michael Cook | May 22, 2016
Is the movement becoming mainstream?by Michael Cook | May 22, 2016
Learning from experience of UK in brushing aside controversyby Xavier Symons | May 22, 2016
A group of scientists in the US are continuing to conduct research on human-animal hybrid embryos, despite a moratorium on funding from the National Institutes…by Xavier Symons | May 22, 2016
A US computational scientist has suggested the next US president should create a ‘technoethics commission’.by Michael Cook | May 22, 2016
Head transplants may not work as plannedby Michael Cook | May 22, 2016
Could lead to genetically-engineered humansby Xavier Symons | May 21, 2016
A US doctor has voiced grave concern about government inaction on increasing suicide rates in the country.by Xavier Symons | May 21, 2016
Researchers have called for greater attention to be paid to "spiritual care" in the treatment of elderly patients.by Xavier Symons | May 18, 2016
There has been growing interest among ethicists in the theme of vulnerability. I recently spoke about the topic with bioethicist Steve Matthews.BioEdge
Suite 12A, Level 2 | 5 George St | North Strathfield NSW 2137 | Australia
Phone: +61 2 8005 8605
Mobile: 0422-691-615
Email: michael@bioedge.org
New Media Foundation | Level 2, 5 George St | North Strathfield NSW 2137 | AUSTRALIA | +61 2 8005 8605
.png)
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario