Customer Reviews

From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an outstanding treatise of the philosophical and ethical engagement between physician and patient. Working to move beyond standard medical school training approach of "detached concern", physician & philosopher Jodi Halpern argues for a progressive empathic stance, reasoned carefully through Kant and Descartes, enriched by psychoanalytic and psychological frameworks, but always grounded in her own experience with patients. This is a careful thinker and academic scholar at work here who has scoured the relevant literature and developed her own trenchant strategies for improving medical care. Designed for practicing physicians but provocative enough to appeal to philosophers and bioethicists. With up-to-date index linking research in medical anthropology, nursing, neuropsych and psychotherapy, as well as analytic mind/body philosophy. This is an author to watch out for.

"From Detached Concern to Empathy" offers deep insights to clinicians caring for
patients with brain disorders, long term illnesses, or chronic suffering.
Dr. Halpern's voice is unique and valuable, providing humane insights that will truly
help enlist doctors attributes in the treatment of patients. Dr. Halpern understands the need for the clinician to relate to the whole person and address their suffering. Dr. Halpern offers clinical tools how to express empathy for the patient's suffering and yet still keep appropriate doctor/patient boundaries.
Every doctor and clinican would benefit from reading this book. Hospitals and clinics would become more healing environments as a result of this book. Dr Halpern integrates the early philosopher's who wrote of suffering to guide the modern day clinican to an empathic understanding of the patient's world and yet still provide modern day medical treatment.
Sharon Dunas,MFT, President - National Alliance on Mental Illness - Los Angeles County

As a healthcare provider, I found Ms. Halpern's book both powerful and essential reading. Her's is a poignant critique, integrating philosophy, case studies, and her own personal experience as a Psychiatrist, of care giver as scientist. Since medicine has been viewed historically as a science, many medical doctors have been trained to see patients as material to be examined and worked on at an emotional distance. Otherwise, they might lose their "objectivity". However, Ms. Halpern points out in her wonderfully written book, that it is this distancing which frequently causes so many doctors to miss what is actually going on with the patient, thus compromising diagnosis and treatment. She humanizes the practice of medicine by challenging this old paradigm. Also, for patients, this book offers insight into the workings of the medical mind so that they can more effectively navigate their own care or the care of loved ones. Finally, this book is not only worthwhile for practitioners of western medicine, but for all of those working in the healing professions. Her humanizing of the doctor-patient relationship opens up deeper realms of healing for all involved in the process. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.