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3rd Global Conference
Making Sense of: Health, Illness and Disease
Monday 5th July - Friday 9th July 2004
St Catherine's College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstract & Papers
Session 7: Suffering, Hope,
Prognosis
Chair: Kath MacDonald
John Paul II and Christian Personalism vs Peter Singer and Utilitarianism:
Two Radically Opposed Conceptions of the Nature and Meaning of Suffering
Peter Colosi
Franciscan University,
Gaming, Austria
No abstract is presently available
Download Full Conference Paper - 
The Inspiration of Hope
Stephen Neff
The inspiration of hope is conceptually vague yet necessary
to the care of
individuals who experience a chronic illness or a long recovery from
disease
or injury. Hope, though valued by nurses and other clinicians in
health and
illness, remains elusive in inquiry and unpredictable in practice. This
paper critically analyzes the inspiration of hope in health and illness
care. Research on hope was culled from nursing literature spanning
the past
20 years and elements pertaining to inspiration extracted. Most
promisingly, several investigators reported the ability of nurses and
other
clinicians to inspire hope. Clinicians inspired hope through setting
and
achieving attainable goals with the patient's participation. Conversely,
hope was not inspired when the clinician unilaterally attempted to set
a
goal for the patient to achieve. Clinicians also saw hope inspired
and
sustained by individuals' abilities to switch between a generalized sense
of
well-being when frustrated in attempts to achieve particular goals and
to
focus on particular goals when their general outlook was one of frustration.
Most notably, hope was strengthened by any positive, emotionally significant
relationship and weakened by the lack of these relationships. Synthesis
of
these findings suggests hope is a solipsistic, indiosyncratic human
attribute that should be rethought in relational terms. Inspiration
of
hope, then, becomes a product of a relationship rather than the expression
of an innate internally driven attribute.
Mental Health, Refusing Mediciation: Rethinking Competence
Glenys Godlovitch
University of Calgary, Canada
No abstract is presently available