Posted on July 12, 2009 by Kate Fagan Taylor, Executive Director
Queenswood's focus on caregivers was chosen by the community because we are at a crucial time in the development of the art of caregiving. I was glad to see that Harvard University's Arthur Kleinman wrote a thought-provoking article on this subject for Saturday's Globe and Mail.
Arthur Kleinman is professor of medical anthropology at Harvard University. He proposes that a reform of the culture of contemporary biomedicine is what is needed:
"to prepare for a career of caregiving, medical students and young doctors clearly require something besides scientific and technological training. Indeed, current professional education can even be seen as enabling the physician as a technical expert, while disabling him or her as a caregiver.
To overcome this trend, we must incorporate the humanities into medical training as a means of rekindling and deepening those human experiences of imagination and commitment that are essential for caregiving, and resisting the bureaucratization of values and emotional responses that causes failure in the physician's art. In essence, the practitioner must come to feel that the art of caregiving is as much at stake as the science and technology of diagnosis and treatment."
We're hoping that Queenswood can be a crucible for this transformation!
Read full artice from the Globe and Mail
