Linacre Quarterly最新文献

Inspired by the Divine Healer Jesus of Nazareth, Catholic healthcare has been a religious exercise since its inception. First practiced in the setting of the monastery in the earliest centuries AD and incarnated over two millennia by a variety of religious orders of consecrated men and women, Catholic healthcare today faces a crisis of identity. The role of the mission leader, envisioned by the religious brothers and sisters who founded various Catholic healthcare organizations, was a primary conduit to preserve the charisms of the founders and ensure the identity of Catholic healthcare as a religious exercise and ministry of the Church. With data from a recent survey of Catholic healthcare mission leaders, a number of critical challenges currently confront the role of mission leader and will potentially inhibit that role from fulfilling its original mandate. This article will present the findings of this survey, analyze the resulting challenges and present specific recommendations to strengthen the role of the mission leader and ensure Catholic healthcare will remain true to its ethos as a ministry of the Church and religious exercise.

According to the principle of duty of care, adults in the lives of children with disabilities such as autistic children are expected to promote their development. The Nutbeam's health literacy model was adopted to explore the efforts of special education teachers and parents toward promoting better eating habits among autistic children in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Twenty-one participants, comprising fifteen special education teachers and six parents with autistic children, were examined in this study. The results indicated that some special education teachers' and parents' limited understanding of unhealthy food might impact the development of autistic children. Furthermore, the findings also highlight the lack of collaboration and communication between teachers regarding the nutrition and healthy living of autistic children. The findings have practical consequences, such as urging UAE health policymakers to provide professional development for special education instructors and parents of autistic children.

The idea that science must be understood in existential contradiction to religion and even theology is more of a conviction than a philosophical or experiential necessity. Indeed, we may now propose "Theological Medicine" as a new terminology for a perennial reality: that most physicians, health care providers, patients, and their caretakers experience the reality of illness within a theological framework, at least for those who have some degree of spiritual or religious belief. Developing a curriculum in Theological Medicine could develop a mechanism to offer appropriate training to healthcare providers. Such a course would have to be created and delivered by experienced physicians and nursing staff, spiritual advisors, clergy representatives such as pastors or priests from different churches or faith communities, bioethicists, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, patient support group members, members of institutional review boards, researchers, and even legal advisors, if available. Continuing professional education requirements also create an opportunity to introduce and evaluate competency in theological medicine, an emerging discipline that could add significant value to the lived experience of medical practice which remains based on the uniquely rich relationship between physician and patient.

Remembering Christ's words of His presence when two or three are gathered, a physician and a patient's wife join in prayer, knowing that Christ shares our wounds as much as He heals them.

Dying in the United States is characterized as: medicalized, depersonalized, high technology, fragmented with frequent transitions among care settings, burdensome to patients and families, driven by efficiency and effectiveness, and lacking in key areas, for example, access to palliative care and adequate pain and symptom treatment. Patients and families are often left with a choice of two extremes: vitalism or utilitarian pessimism (utilitarianism). The Catholic Church, however, rejects both of these extremes, and Catholic social teaching (CST) at end of life focuses on ordinary-extraordinary treatments/means, a culture of life and human dignity, accompaniment and community, and caring for whole persons through the end of life. The Catholic tradition of ordinary-extraordinary means is helpful to guide complex end-of-life decisions, regardless of one's religious beliefs, and offers a middle ground between vitalism and utilitarianism that can inform end-of-life care and decision-making for all patients in Catholic health care. While it does not provide answers, it offers guidance and enables conversations that are crucial for the dying and their families to make autonomous, informed decisions about end-of-life care. It provides an opportunity for the dying to let the care team, loved ones, and decision-makers know what a life with meaning, purpose, and passion is for them-and how they want to live and die. This article will summarize the problem, describe end-of-life Catholic teaching, and discuss how it offers a middle-ground. Arguments for and against vitalism and utilitarianism will be explored, including a discussion of CST's response to those receiving care in Catholic health care facilities who are outside the Catholic tradition and do not believe in the teaching. The last section describes a model of collaborative partnership where local parishes and Catholic health care come together to tackle the challenges of caring for and ministering to the seriously ill and those facing death.

The College of Physicians of Madrid organized an open debate on conscientious objection (CO) in the medical profession on September 14, 2022. We summarize here the main arguments discussed. CO is defined as the right to raise exceptions to the performance of legal duties when they involve a contravention of personal convictions, whether religious, moral, or philosophical. It is not insubordination. Some authors contend that any decision by elected authorities should be uniformly followed by all citizens, physicians not being an exception. However, suppressing the ethical dimension of medical care may have an unacceptable cost with harm to physicians, their patients, and ultimately society. Health professionals are not blind instruments or mere "executors." The practice of medicine must follow the aim of the profession, namely the pursuit of the patient's good. Medical care must conform to medical ethics, which was first defined twenty-five centuries ago in the Hippocratic oath, and summarized with the triad of precepts "cure, relief, accompaniment." Since then and particularly in light of the Nuremberg trials, most medical declarations have highlighted the duty of defending human life and the importance of CO. In modern societies, there may be medical services that are not health care, even if they are legal. Then, which comes first law or ethics? Ultimately, CO is the tool that protects the freedom of the physician to refuse to perform actions that go against the values of medical ethics. With respect to the recent Spanish laws on abortion, euthanasia, and sex re-assignment of minors, if administrators want to know who is available for a health service that raises issues of conformity to medical ethics, requesting a list of volunteers is preferable to producing an objector list. Asking for registration of conscientious objectors goes against the right to privacy and is coercive, intrusive, and abusive.