title: Faith healing and the palliative care team.
abstract: As the spiritual care needs of patients and their loved ones have become an essential component of palliative care, clinicians are being challenged to develop new ways of addressing the spiritual issues that often arise in the palliative care setting. Recent research has given attention to the communication strategies that are effective with patients or their loved ones who report that they are seeking a miraculous physical healing. However, these strategies often assume a unilateral rather than collaborative view of divine intervention. Communication strategies that are effective with unilateral understandings of divine intervention may be contraindicated with those who hold to a collaborative view of divine intervention. Greater attention to language of human-divine interaction along with approaching faith healing as a third modality of treatment are explored as additional interventions.
authors.affiliation: Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center-Torrance, Torrance, CA 90503, USA. Denise.Hess@providence.org
authors.forename: Denise
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hess
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D029221:Faith Healing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000379:methods; D010348:Patient Care Team; D012068:Religion and Medicine