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Transition From Hopelessness to Wholeness

Jay M. Milstein, MD

JAMA. 2008;299(20):2440-2441.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

When cure eludes patients with devastating conditions, healing measures become of utmost importance to the patients and their families.^1-2 In an integrative approach to care, healing and curing are introduced in parallel as soon as any diagnosis, especially a critical one, is made.³ In this model, healing addresses the human experience of illness and curing the organic aspects of disease. Because loss can be experienced even in the absence of death, bereavement is represented as a continual process from the outset and usually increases after death.³

Since many diagnoses cause devastation to patients and their families, this approach to medical care has an element of universality. For example, when parents learn that their newborn child has significant, life-threatening problems⁴ or that their 3-year-old has cancer,⁵ they must deal with a profound sense of loss from the outset, even if death is not imminent.³ Similarly, when one . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Spiritual Intervention

Author Affiliation: Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, California.

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