for healing. Our tradition teaches us that we cannot stand in isolation. Healing involves refuah
shleimah, whole healing, an integrative healing.
This conceptualization of refuah shleimah
provides a valuable lens through which we can
view the emerging field of integrative medicine.
In a recent article by Drs. Snyderman and
Weil, integrative medicine is described as an approach to healing.* It combines the best of conventional medicine and those complementary
therapies proven to be safe and effective. Such a
combination seeks a broader, more inclusive,
blended medicine, open to the diversity of healing traditions.* It emphasizes the participatory nature of healing. It offers approaches intended to
enable the person seeking healing or wellness to
make informed choices about diet, exercise, stress
reduction, mind-body techniques, and spiritual
and religious practices. Consistent with God’s
command in Deuteronomy, “Choose life!” integrative medicine encourages judicious decision-making. Both require participation.* Integrative
medicine underscores the importance of the relationship between the healer and the individual
seeking healing. It proposes that the therapeutic
relationship itself, the belief in the therapist
and/or the therapy can increase or decrease the
effectiveness of any treatment, regardless of
whether that treatment is a drug, surgery, radiation, or acupuncture. Although scientifically unproven, a corollary suggests that the way we live
our lives and the state of our psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being impact our health
and illness. Furthermore, when we invoke the
healing of the soul in the Misheberach prayer, we
recognize the soul’s intrinsic power to contribute
to the prevention of disease and treatment or also
acknowledges that most medical interventions are
intended to enhance the potential for self-healing,
a God-given gift. For example, the surgeon closes
a wound but the body must heal it.
Integrative medicine is about wholeness. This
societal trend, when combined with Jewish teaching, enables us to envision a model of care where
the healing of the body and the healing of the soul
unite to bring wholeness, a refuah shleimah.
*Integrative Medicine: Bringing Medicine Back to its Roots
Snyderman R, Weil AT.
SHMA.COM
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Chaplaincy:
Separate Conversations, Interlocking Parts
SUSAN HARRIS
As a hospital chaplain, I don’t have doctor- patient relationships. Like the blind per- son and the elephant, I explore the
“whole” piece by piece. I try to make sense of the
hospital universe talking to patients, doctors, and
staff — separate conversations, interlocking parts.
What I do as a chaplain is listen and observe. I
witness acts of quiet courage, generosity, faith,
compassion, and even grace. This is not a passive
endeavor, rather an active witnessing, an affirmation that our experience matters, that no one
is utterly alone. We are all in this struggle for
healing together.
It is easiest to begin with the patient. Those
who find themselves in the hospital are dislocated
physically and psychically from their everyday
lives and routines, and also from their own sense
of self. Many are anxious. Either in pain or anticipating pain, their fear is palpable. Spiritual distress is universal. Patients and their families try to
hold on to hope; they struggle, in some instances,
to understand what hope even means. Healing
and cure are two separate but related processes.
The search for meaning takes on new dimensions
in the hospital.
Patients are by no means alone in the search.
Doctors and staff rarely have the time or structure to process their experiences and relationships
in ways that illumine their work. Theirs is an isolation that is invisible and undermines, at times,
the good work to which they are so passionately
dedicated. Doctors are often caring and concerned individuals reeling from the cumulative
impact of loss and frustration.
Teaching Torah to medical professionals, I
find silence to be a fundamental nuance of isolation. Physicians are by no means impervious to
the behavior of their colleagues. Once “burned,”
patients become increasingly wary. The next
physician entrusted with their care inherits the
legacy of the brusque remark, the late or unreturned phone call, or the patient’s sense of abandonment.
Where the doctor and patient meet is, of
course, in talking. In the hospital, their communication is the world they inhabit together. A patient must know the prognosis of a disease. The
physician must understand the impact of that
prognosis on the life being lived. That
conversation can be healing. Jewish tradition instructs that
Susan Harris is a chaplain at
Children’s Hospital in Boston.
