Healing by heart: Clinical and ethical case stories of Hmong families and western providers
- Author(s):
- Culhane-pera, Kathleen A.
- Format:
- Book
- Publisher:
- Vanderbilt University Press, 2003.
- Series:
- Healing by Heart: Clinical and Ethical Case Stories of Hmong Families and Western Providers
- Pages:
- 1
- Language:
- English
- Abstract:
- "This is a 'must read' book for anyone interested in providing more culturally competent health care and addressing cross-cultural ethical conflicts. The writing is fascinating, informative, practical, and provocative. Congratulations on what I am sure will become a seminal text in the field!"- Robert C. Like "A spectacular work of scholarship and collaboration among authors of varying backgrounds, professions, and ethnicities. It covers a very broad range of medical and ethical issues in an accessible format, based on actual medical cases in all their frustrating and fascinating complexity. The views of both health professionals and patients/families are represented, along with steps in negotiating mutually acceptable courses of action. This unique and important work will quickly become indispensable to all who teach about, study, or practice cross-cultural health care and medical ethics."-Bonnie B. O'Connor Healing by Heart is a book of stories-stories of people's search for culturally responsive health care from U.S. providers. It offers resources to providers and institutions committed to delivering culturally responsive health care, paying special attention to building successful relationships with traditional Hmong patients and families. It makes available extensive information about the health-related beliefs, practices, and values of the Hmong people, including photographs of traditional healing methods. Ranging in age from young infants to older adults, the patients in the stories present a wide range of health problems. The clinicians are from family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry/psychology, and hospice. Each of the fourteen case stories is accompanied by discussion questions as well as two or three commentaries. The commentaries-written by patients, family members, shaman, Western clinicians (including Hmong physicians, nurses, and social workers), medical anthropologists, health care ethicists, social workers, psychologists, and clergy-are rich in personal reflections on cross-cultural health care experiences. Readers are rewarded with a combination of perspectives, including those of Hmong authors who have not previously published in English and scholars with years of professional experience working with the Hmong in Laos, Thailand, and the United States. The editors offer a model for delivering culturally responsive health care with special attention to matters of cross-cultural health care ethics. The model identifies questions health care providers can focus on as they seek to understand the health-related moral commitments and practices prevalent in the cultural groups they serve, ethical questions that arise frequently and with great poignancy in cross-cultural health care relationships, and points to consider when a patient's treatment wish challenges the provider's professional integrity. By sharing stories of suffering, confusion, and success, Healing by Heart couples an accessible method of learning about others with concrete recommendations about how to enhance cross-cultural health care relationships. © 2003 Minnesota Center for Health Care Ethics. All rights reserved.
- ISBN:
- 0826514308 (ISBN); 9780826514301 (ISBN)
- Identifier:
- HmongStudies0635