chaotic, hi-tech, depersonalizing world of current sickness care. It is a must-read for physicians, nurses, other health care professionals, and students of these therapeutic disciplines. But it is also insightfully useful for clergy, lay caregivers, and seminarians, as well as secular caregivers. Dr. Owens gives all of us wounded healers the gift of in-depth, innovative understandings of empathy and suffering, brokenness and caregiving, healing and wholeness, and-very important-the teaching and learning of integrative empathy that nurtures wholeness in both sufferers and healers. * Howard Clinebell, Ph.D., Author, Anchoring Your Well Being: Christian Wholeness in a Fractured World *
Dr. Owens has an amazingly intuitive grasp of this complicated problem, as if she has stood in the shoes of both patients and physicians. Her analysis goes to the roots of the problem, including the social, psychological, and theological issues. She provides a background and an understanding that the scholar, physician, and patient can all use. This book should be required reading for everyone intent on improving the interaction between physician and patient. I know of no other book like it. * John Bennett, M.D., M.A.C.P. National Institute of Health, Bethesda *
Dr. Owens' book investigates the theological and religious underpinnings of the physician's role in American culture, evaluates it, and proposes a theologically and psychologically based response. In days of managed care and other ideologies that constrain what 'health care' means, Dr. Owens asks us to re-examine the foundations upon which care resides. * Volney P. Gay, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University *
Dr. Owens' book translates the human chemistry of empathetic communication that interdigitates patient welfare and physician initiative. She treats the subject of feeling through psychology and theology in ways clinically useful and programmatically interesting. The willingness and ability to communicate is integral to empathy and a proper physician/patient relationship. The model is useful, the substance interesting and the activity generally helpful to an understanding leading to evaluation and a proper course of action. * John E. Chapman, M.D., Vanderbilt University *
