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Healing by Heart
Clinical and Ethical Case Stories of Hmong Families and Western Providers
Edited by Kathleen A. Culhane-Pera, Dorothy E. Vawter, Phua Xiong, Barbara Babbitt and Mary M. Solberg
Healing by Heart is a book of stories--stories of people's search for culturally responsive health care from U.S. providers. It offers resources to providers and institutions committed to delivering culturally responsive health care, paying special attention to building successful relationships with traditional Hmong patients and families. It makes available extensive information about the health-related beliefs, practices, and values of the Hmong people, including photographs of traditional healing methods.
Ranging in age from young infants to older adults, the patients in the stories present a wide range of health problems. The clinicians are from family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry/psychology, and hospice.
Each of the fourteen case stories is accompanied by discussion questions as well as two or three commentaries. The commentaries--written by patients, family members, shaman, Western clinicians (including Hmong physicians, nurses, and social workers), medical anthropologists, health care ethicists, social workers, psychologists, and clergy--are rich in personal reflections on cross-cultural health care experiences. Readers are rewarded with a combination of perspectives, including those of Hmong authors who have not previously published in English and scholars with years of professional experience working with the Hmong in Laos, Thailand, and the United States.
The editors offer a model for delivering culturally responsive health care with special attention to matters of cross-cultural health care ethics. The model identifies questions health care providers can focus on as they seek to understand the health-related moral commitments and practices prevalent in the cultural groups they serve, ethical questions that arise frequently and with great poignancy in cross-cultural health care relationships, and points to consider when a patient's treatment wish challenges the provider's professional integrity.
By sharing stories of suffering, confusion, and success, Healing by Heart couples an accessible method of learning about others with concrete recommendations about how to enhance cross-cultural health care relationships.
Ranging in age from young infants to older adults, the patients in the stories present a wide range of health problems. The clinicians are from family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry/psychology, and hospice.
Each of the fourteen case stories is accompanied by discussion questions as well as two or three commentaries. The commentaries--written by patients, family members, shaman, Western clinicians (including Hmong physicians, nurses, and social workers), medical anthropologists, health care ethicists, social workers, psychologists, and clergy--are rich in personal reflections on cross-cultural health care experiences. Readers are rewarded with a combination of perspectives, including those of Hmong authors who have not previously published in English and scholars with years of professional experience working with the Hmong in Laos, Thailand, and the United States.
The editors offer a model for delivering culturally responsive health care with special attention to matters of cross-cultural health care ethics. The model identifies questions health care providers can focus on as they seek to understand the health-related moral commitments and practices prevalent in the cultural groups they serve, ethical questions that arise frequently and with great poignancy in cross-cultural health care relationships, and points to consider when a patient's treatment wish challenges the provider's professional integrity.
By sharing stories of suffering, confusion, and success, Healing by Heart couples an accessible method of learning about others with concrete recommendations about how to enhance cross-cultural health care relationships.
Barbara Babbitt, BSN, RN, MA, has spent many years working to improve the way health care is delivered to culturally diverse families in the Twin Cities.
Dorothy E. Vawter, PhD, associate director, Minnesota Center for Health Care Ethics, directs the Center's work on cross-cultural health care ethics.
Kathleen A. Culhane-Pera, MD, MA, is a family physician at Ramsey Family and Community Medicine Residency and West Side Community Health Center.
Mary M. Solberg, PhD, MSW, is a member of the religion faculty at Gustavus Adolphus College.
Phua Xiong, MD, is a family-practice physician at the St. Paul Family Medical Center in St. Paul.
"In Healing by Heart, a wide-ranging group of individuals draw from their experience with Hmong patients to present a clear and unique vision for achieving cultural competency in health care. . . . Healing by Heart raises fundamental questions, such as how can health care professionals diagnose or treat a patient from a group whose beliefs, explanatory models, and communication patterns are radically different from their own? . . . I recommend Healing by Heart to a wide audience of health care practitioners, anthropologists, sociologists, public health-oriented individuals, ethics committee members, and others interested in cross-cultural health care."
--Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
"This is a 'must read' book for anyone interested in providing more culturally competent health care and addressing cross-cultural ethical conflicts."
--Robert C. Like, MD, Director, Center for Healthy Families and Cultural Diversity, UMDNJ
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