HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALING IS FOCUS OF PANEL DISCUSSION
Woodstock Sentinel-Review
Thu 11 Nov 2004
Page: 7
Section: Lifestyles
Byline: BY HEATHER RIVERS-HARRON, HEALTH REPORTER
A full-day workshop held last week, the first for the new St. Paul's Spirit Centre, focused on how to bring art into the health-care system.
"I think bringing humanity back into healing is very important,'' said Dr. Lonnie Atkinson, one of the organizers of the event. "I think it needs to be reintroduced. We've gone to a scientific side, but there has been a shift in the last decade to bring arts and humanities back in."
A five-member panel focusing on this issue was led by Dr. Ronald Stewart, a recipient of the Order of Canada and director of medical humanities and professor of anaesthesia and emergency medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Also on the panel were Dr. Francis Chan, associate dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Western Ontario; Ruth Orange, a nurse practitioner; Francis Hudson, parish nurse; and Dr. Joel Wohlgemut, an Ingersoll family physician.
Hudson, in a new role as a parish nurse at the centre, said it is important that patients' needs be met through "wholeness of body, mind and spirit."
"Our mission is people-centred,'' she said. "That way, we can work with the existing health-care system to complement them."
Addressing patients holistically became a central theme during the panel discussions.
"Science has adopted a specific science model (for health care),'' Wohlgemut said. "When we reach the limits of science, that's when it becomes tricky. The difficult part is convincing patients what science will not do for them in chronic diseases, such as cancer, depression and mental illness.
"Managing pain doesn't get better."
Chan spoke about the "beauty and fragility" of the human experience.
"We need to find time to put arts and humanity into our programs,'' he said. "Students only learn by role models. I want (my students) to know what I feel about life and death and the arts."
Orange agreed that the "physical, spiritual and medical" all have to be addressed "to make that patient well again."
She encourages active listening by health-care professionals.
"We need a collaborative approach (to healing) with the individual and family. The healing takes place just by you being the facilitator," she said.
Orange told the group that even though it's more difficult, the effort has to be made.
"It's about negotiating and working something out with the family," she said.
For Chan, "the patient should be at the centre."
Stewart said he tries to instil these principles in his students as well.
"We call it the hidden curriculum,'' he said. "We try to instil certain principles."
The event was geared to health care and social service professionals, who want to explore new approaches and trends in medicine, Atkinson said.
The Spirit Centre hopes to offer two or three educational and personal renewal events annually.
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