In her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman describes the story of the Lee family and the frightening task they had to to undergo to provide their daughter with medical aid. The Lees along with the other thousands of Hmong immigrants, tried to understand the and navigate the complex and sometimes confusing healthcare system in the United States. As the book points out, the values and ideals of the Hmong culture and the United States health care system are not always the same and sometimes come into great conflict with each other. Lia Lee was unfortunately the person stuck in the middle of this great conflict.
“It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die at the end” (Edson 6). Margaret Edson, throughout her play Wit, compares ways of viewing the world through the eyes of Dr. Vivian Bearing, a middle-aged professor of seventeenth-century poetry at the university. Recently diagnosed with stage four metastatic ovarian cancer, she undergoes treatment at a major research hospital and knows the prognosis is not good. Over the course of the play, Vivian takes the audience to various scenes in the past and present that illuminate her achievements in the world of scholarship and show what happens to her as she is treated with aggressive chemotherapy for eight months. As one might expect, her outlook on life and death, heavily influenced by the works of John Donne, change as the treatment progresses.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 at the height of the Victorian era is often mistaken as a feminist short story. She tries to tell its readers how women have been confined in this “domestic role” since the beginning of time. The narrator uses the wallpaper to represent the society she lives in. Not only does the wallpaper affect the narrator, but also it influences everyone that meets it. And how these roles ultimately will drive any woman insane. Men dominated the workplace and was head of his household that was just what life was back then. In earlier centuries, it was unusual for a woman to work alongside men.
In Margaret Edson’s Wit, the author uses the binary opposition of compassion and austerity. The protagonist, Vivian Bearing, a doctor of English, learns that she has advanced ovarian cancer, and undergoes an experimental chemotherapy program. Her doctor, Jason, and her nurse, Susie, have different views of her mortality, and the author shows their contrasting views in a particular scene. While Susie shows a more compassionate side to Vivian, Jason is very stern with her. Jason faces the inevitable with no hesitation and though Susie can as well, she also comforts Vivian. Even though Vivian seems to be very passive, both compassion and austerity impact her in a different way because austerity leads to being scared and compassion leads to being
In the essay, “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs uses humorous diction and a positive tone to educate people about life as a cripple and struggles of people with disabilities. She does this to show how hard it is to be disabled and how it differs from the life of someone without a disability. She talks about the struggles and the fears that disabled people must deal with on a daily basis. Mairs use of rhetoric creates a strong sense of connection and understanding for the reader. Nancy Mairs is successful in using detailed imagery, diction, and tone to educate her readers about the difficulties of living with a disability.
In the film, The Fault in Our Stars, we are introduced to Hazel Grace Lancaster, a teenage girl diagnosed with stage IV cancer. She shares her backstory and discusses her cancer diagnosis. Hazel states that it started out as thyroid cancer, but it moved onto her lungs. She explained, “there wasn’t much they could do, but they tried anyway” (Boone, 2014). In the beginning of the film, Hazel and her mother are attending a doctor’s appointment where they are seen meeting with Dr. Maria. At this meeting they are discussing Hazel’s condition and reviewing her plan of care. Additionally, Hazel’s mother is expressing her concerns about her daughters behavior and she feels Hazel is “depressed.” Dr. Maria reviews various medical options to care for Hazel’s feelings of being depressed. She also suggests Hazel attends a local support group of other young people who are living with or surviving cancer.
According to Julia Wood (2004), “communication is a systemic process in which individuals interact with and through symbols to create and interpret meanings. However, Sheppard (1993) suggests that, in the nurse–patient relationship, communication involves more than the transmission of information; it also involves transmitting feelings, recognizing these feelings and letting the patient know that their feelings have been recognized (M, 1993)”. It is a two way process. The patient conveys their fears and concerns to their nurse and helps them make a correct nursing diagnosis. An excellent communication skill between nurses and patients is essential for the successful outcome of individualized nursing care of each patient. The ability to communicate
The concept of ethics entails systemizing, justifying, and recommending right and wrong conduct. It involves in practical reasoning: good, right, duty, obligation, virtue, freedom, rationality, and choice. Humanity has questioned this concept of ethics and ‘good’ for as long as it has survived, as it deals with real-life issues such as “what is morally right and wrong?” and “how do people ought to act?” Such ethical dilemmas can be found in people’s everyday lives, and although appears to be a straightforward question, there is much debate over which standard of behavior people should abide to when responding to certain situations, and determining what is morally right or wrong.
“Living Will” by Danielle Ofri is about an author who is a doctor who came across a patient that is suicidal. “They All Just Went Away” by Joyce Carol Oates is about a young lonely girl who finds herself attracted in entering abandoned house and is entranced by other peoples lives and what they left by. Although these stories are very different, I believe both the authors share a similar idea, but different outlooks, of how the main characters in each essay struggle to do the right thing.
Dr. Jean Watson began her career as a Registered Nurse in 1961, however, she did not stop learning and advancing her mind there. Over several years she obtained multiple degrees; including a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Counseling. Serious personal loss led Dr. Watson to fully realize her beliefs and to truly comprehend her own writings stimulating her to formulate her Caring Science Theory. Dr. Watson’s theory is comprised of 10 Caritas Processes that bring arts and humanities together with science to provide more loving and compassionate care to yourself and others. Dr. Watson’s theory speaks to me because I believe that everyone is entitled
The article broke down one of the most horrific natural disasters of the century. For many, the wounds have yet to heal and with this article, those individuals and their families are forced to show us their scars again. This was equally hard for Fink to report after talking to survivors from Katrina. She unbiasedly informed her audience who may have been oblivious to what the conditions were for just this hospital alone. The help in the recovery of these sick and injured souls was not treated as a life or death emergency like it should have been. This is the subtext I understood. The old, elderly life support patients, "let 's not worry with them." This article I believe is highly controversial because Fink breaks down what us (the reader) were unaware of as a society. The doctors were playing God with morphine. It has been ten years and the victims of Katrina
"The Patient as Text: Literary Scholarship and Medical Practice in Margret Edson's Wit," by Ann Henley, is a critical essay claiming teachers of literature and medical professionals should asses their efficacy in conveying to students and patients the "simple human truths" that dignify life and death. Henley how both professions use language as inhibitors to avoid meaningful personal communication and to treat their subject of research as nothing more than an object. Henley describes how words are the tools of power, not only for literary scholars but for the medical professionals as well. Kelekian also uses a ton of medical terminology, not to inform Vivian, but to "obfuscate". Which reminds Vivian of how she too uses the language as a teacher
I found this movie interesting because I agree with what the film implied on how all patient share a commonality called vulnerability. In the movie Wit, you are allowed a peek into the medical world that shows disregard for humanity. The film revolves around an English professor, Vivian Bearing, being diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, the treatment, and how her professional status is taken away for being a patient. A major theme of this movie is dependency on others by chronicling Vivian 's trial treatment and it allows the viewers a peek into the world of a patient dying from cancer. After watching the film, I noticed that there were a lot of significant moral issues, which correlates with the nursing profession. One of it is the proper way of upholding patient 's rights when it comes to medical research. As a nursing major, I am aware that it is one of my ethical responsibilities to ensure that utmost care and treatment are provided to my patient 's advocate which means that we should stand and do something when we see malpractice being done to our patients. The doctors used Vivian as a research subject, but her nurse Susie struggles to guarantee the most beneficial care and treatment is provided for her. This film depicts the significance of advocating and fighting for patients as well as their rights in order to ensure that they are receiving optimal medical treatment.
It is very easy to get wrapped up in the day to day tasks that we complete as nurses. But in order to give our patients the best possible care, we must look at our day through a holistic lens. The following essay will outline the theory as created by the “lady with the lamp” Florence Nightingale. We will look at the different components that are important to a patient’s health and outline on to incorporate these components into current practice.
Dorothea Orem was an extravagant nursing theorist whose theories were first published in 1971 (Dorothea Orem 's Self-Care Theory, 2014). Orem established several fascinating theories of nursing which are still are current in today’s nursing. Orem proposed three nursing theories that are identified as: self-care theory, theory of Self-care deficit and theory of nursing system (Dorothea Orem 's Self-Care Theory, 2014). Orem’s nursing theories are defined as a grand theory (Nursing Theories: An Overview, 2014). Grand theory is defined as an abstract outline under which the key conceptions and values of the discipline can be acknowledged (Nursing Theories: An Overview, 2014). Orem’s theories mainly proposed that