With increasing evidence that there is a connection between illness, spirituality, and healing, this book, the first to consider suffering and spirituality jointly, provides a non-religious, practical guidebook for dealing with this phenomenon. This holistic assessment tool is an in-depth, step-by-step, practical guide to starting conversations about spirituality with patients and their families in order to encourage healing and diminish or alleviate emotional, physical, and/or spiritual suffering. Provides a model by which nurses and other health professionals can understand the relationship between suffering and spirituality within the context of an illness

After twelve years, author Lorraine M. Wright, RN, Ph.D. revisits her well-received book, Spirituality, Suffering, and Illness: Ideas for Healing (2005). With updated research, new illness narratives, this latest edition provides insights, guidance and advice for individuals/families experiencing illness suffering and for helping professionals seeking to soften their suffering. Spirituality and Suffering: The Path to Illness Healing also offers clinical practice ideas from a non-religious approach to the crossroads of suffering, spirituality, and illness. A holistic model emphasizing suffering, spirituality, and illness beliefs, the Trinity Model, is also offered. Actual clinical examples are provided to show how to integrate, implement, and enhance health professionals' spiritual care practices that soften suffering with patients and families experiencing serious illness, disability, or loss. About the Author: Lorraine M Wright, RN, Ph.D. is an international speaker, author/blogger, and consultant/therapist in family nursing and family therapy. She is also a Professor Emeritus of Nursing, University of Calgary. Dr. Wright has published extensively and spoken widely at spiritual care, family nursing, family therapy, chronic illness, oncology and palliative care conferences, workshops, universities and hospitals. When not lecturing, consulting, and/or travelling worldwide, Dr. Wright resides in Calgary, Canada.

Fusing the disciplines of health care, spiritual care, and social services, this book examines the relationship between chronic illness and spirituality. Contributors include professionals working in traditional, holistic and integrative clinical settings, as well as religious studies scholars and spiritual practitioners.

Long ago, the Buddha taught that we create the world with our thoughts; and the more attached we are to things being a certain way, the more we suffer. Nowhere is this clearer than with chronic illness and pain: Our self-blame, anguish, depression, fear, loneliness, anger and embarrassment are the byproducts of denying the reality of illness or pain. If we are courageous enough to set aside our beliefs, hopes, and longings for a former or mythical ideal of health, which pull us out of the present moment, we free ourselves from the hell realm of suffering. Mindfully observing what is right here-and-now enables true healing to take place--healing that moves us beyond our naive ideas of health and illness. After all, we are not brains on a stick. Mind and body are united by spirit and it is spiritual understanding that leads us to the well where wisdom, love and compassion abide--qualities vital to the recovery of wholeness and well-being. SUFFERING BUDDHA points the way to inner healing; it is not a how-to manual or glib prescription for spiritual transcendence, precisely because such are not necessary. In our own wise, awakened hearts lies the key to wellness and ease.

'McWhinney's Textbook of Family Medicine' is one of the seminal texts in the field, defining the principles and practices of family medicine as a distinct field of practice. The fourth edition presents six new clinical chapters of common problems in family medicine.

A ministry resource comprising twenty essays by experts on the theological, psychological, and personal dimensions of loss, dying, and death.

In the last fifteen years, the field of palliative care has experienced a surge in interest in spirituality as an important aspect of caring for seriously ill and dying patients. While spirituality has been generally recognized as an essential dimension of palliative care, uniformity of spiritual care practice has been lacking across health care settings due to factors like varying understandings and definitions of spirituality, lack of resources and practical tools, and limited professional education and training in spiritual care. In order to address these shortcomings, more than forty spiritual and palliative care experts gathered for a national conference to discuss guidelines for incorporating spirituality into palliative care. Their consensus findings form the basis of Making Health Care Whole. This important new resource provides much-needed definitions and charts a common language for addressing spiritual care across the disciplines of medicine, nursing, social work, chaplaincy, psychology, and other groups. It presents models of spiritual care that are broad and inclusive, and provides tools for screening, assessment, care planning, and interventions. This book also advocates a team approach to spiritual care, and specifies the roles of each professional on the team. Serving as both a scholarly review of the field as well as a practical resource with specific recommendations to improve spiritual care in clinical practice, Making Health Care Whole will benefit hospices and palliative care programs in hospitals, home care services, and long-term care services. It will also be a valuable addition to the curriculum at seminaries, schools of theology, and medical and nursing schools.