Description
The crisis in health care is in part a failure to communicate.
Health care regulatory agencies demand that patients receive efficient, competent, compassionate care; however, because of caregivers’ own unhealed issues along with other factors, care often falls short of those goals. Melanie Sears, RN, MBA, PhD, leverages more than thirty years of nursing experience to look at what really prevents patients from getting the care they need and health care workers from getting the support needed to thrive in the stressful environment of health care. From domination-style management, fear and judgment-based practitioner relationships, and a poignant separation between physical, mental, and emotional care, the costs of these factors are enormous. Sears argues that the most effective way to evolve this problematic culture is to shift the language used by those providing care.
Endorsements
Cover endorsements:
“Health care providers should read and use this book. Its message is life-saving.”
—CHRISTIANE NORTHRUP, MD, OB/GYNphysician, and author, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause
“Humanizing Health Care teaches honesty without fear, responsibility without blame, and power without exploitation.”
—GABOR MATÉ, MD, author of When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection
“A valuable resource for all care providers and consumers who are interested in being partners in the recovery process.”
—DONNA RIEMER, RN, PMHN-BC, Certified Traumatologist
Interior endorsements:
What People Are Saying About Humanizing Health Care:
“When health care providers know how to communicate clearly about human needs and the emotions that signal them, the entire heath care terrain changes. Hearts open … and we can all give and receive the best possible health care. Here’s my advice. Read and use this book. Its message is life-saving.”
—CHRISTIANE NORTHRUP, MD, OB/GYN physician, and author of the New York Times bestsellers: Women’s Bodies,Women’sWisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause
“Humanizing Health Care is beautifully designed and cogently addresses better communication skills in a straightforward, practical manner. The author discusses psychiatric ward settings for many of her communication examples, but the communication techniques she explains can be used anywhere to improve relations and to more empathically connect with others, be they patients, clients, students, or friends and family. A lovely book.”
—PETER R. BREGGIN, MD, author, Medication Madness, Heart of Being Helpful, and Toxic Psychiatry
“Finally, a book that addresses the need to change our delivery of health care—turn the focus from diagnoses, labels, and judgments into possibilities of health and healing through compassion, caring, and connection.”
—SYLVIA HASKVITZ, MA, RD, author, Eat by Choice, Not by Habit, and CNVC Certified Trainer
“Humanizing Health Care is a valuable resource for all care providers and consumers who are interested in being partners in the recovery process. This book shares practical skills required for use in creating a trauma informed and trauma sensitive environment.”
—DONNA RIEMER, RN, PMHN-BC, Certified Traumatologist
“In Humanizing Health Care, Melanie Sears provides an invitation for those who lead and work in health care environments to revolutionize the way we provide health care. She provides the tools that will help create the kind of environments that truly provide the safety, the compassion, and the efficiency that our health care systems so desperately need. I dream of working in an environment that has adopted these tools.”
—JOAN KELLY, LICSW, GMHS, MT-BC
“As a patient in a psychiatric hospital and a recipient of Mel’s empathy skills which she outlines with such clarity in this book, I was able to heal emotionally both from my original wounding and the trauma of being hospitalized. Having a witness to my intense feelings helped me gradually find trust in myself again.”
—JOANNE LANE, mother, civil engineer, and survivor of mental diagnosis
“Humanizing Health Care is a call from the heart to transform our health care system into a system that cares about people’s health and about the health of the people who work in it. As Melanie articulately and insightfully shows, the two are inseparable. Humanizing Health Care teaches honesty without fear, responsibility without blame, and power without exploitation.”
—GABOR MATÉ, MD, author of When The Body Says No:Understanding The Stress-Disease Connection
