Most people struggle to balance time between their careers and families. In the video clip by Fr.Boyle, texts “The Scalpel and the Silver Bear” and “Filial Relations “it becomes clear that we can provide service to others by way of our careers. This is meaningful because it shows that we need to block out separate time blocks for service to others if our careers are ones that serve others. Less balls to keep in the air!
Fr. Boyle did his part to meet the needs of an improvised and gang ridden community by providing alternatives for this community to the criminal lifestyle. They did this by creating work opportunities for them as well as spiritual fulfillment. Fr. Boyle describes his work with these people as the “privilege of his life”. Through
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his work Fr. Boyle changed the life of many by giving them a chance to change their lives through honest work and spiritual fulfillment. Fr. Boyle talks about service as the hallway leading to the ballroom. The hallway leads to the ballroom, the ballroom he describes as kinship. Service leads to kinship. A powerful message Fr. Boyle spoke to about kinship is that fact that kinship is best encountered when all people are let into the circle. He said that Jesus stands with the people whom others may have thrown away. I think this statement speaks to the true motivation of his work. The people he serves are those which others had given up on but Fr. Boyle looked to expand the circle of kinship by including them into the circle and giving them a chance to increase their life’s purpose. This of course has increased the purpose of Fr. Boyle’s life. It becomes evident from Fr. Boyles speech that he was able to effectively lead a life of fulfillment through service to others. He doesn’t mention his nuclear family much but I can only imagine that members of the church and the “homeboys” and girls he served were very much his family members. The text “The Scalpel and the Silver Bear” is narrated in Chapter 4 by Dr.
Cupp. Dr. Cupp is a Navajo doctor who after receiving an ivy league education in medicine returns to serve her indigenous people (Alvord, 58). In serving her people through her medical training she realized there was a need which is being unmet by her profession. That need is to gain the trust of her patients. Dr. Cupp sees that the patients are uneasy with Western medicine because it is foreign to them. Dr. Cupp talks about a surgery she performed on a native named Evelyn. Evelyn was uneasy about the procedure, and there was conflict between the medical staff during her procedure, Dr. Cupp believes that this unease led to a stroke suffered by Evelyn (Alvord, 1999, p. 73) .Dr. Cupp points out that “from a Navajo standpoint, illness can be caused by and imbalance or lack of harmony” (Alvord,. 74). Dr. Cupp sees the error of her ways and encounters her patients by speaking to them in their native tongue in order to gain their respect and trust (Alvord, 1999, p. 76) . Other doctors also adopt these methods and they are successful.
I believe that when Dr. Cupp returned to her indigenous home she believed that just providing medical service was enough. In doing this she failed to realize he true needs of her people. This caused tension between herself and her patients because she was not providing the type of medical attention they were familiar with. She soon corrected this mistake and was able to truly
provide purposeful service to her people by adapting to methods which were familiar to them. By doing this Dr.Cupp was able to become truly fulfilled. Author, Jane Addams points out that it can be difficult to balance the needs of our families and the needs of society but it can be done. Her text speaks to the true tension which can arise in a family when its members leave to pursue work which is foreign to the family. Adams talks about the Father of St. Francis who was hurt by his son severing his relations with his family in order to lead a life of service (Addams, 306). Addams suggests the sort of pain felt by his father can be healed by an expansion of thought which realizes that his son is leading a life of purpose which will benefit the grader good. Sources: Addams, J. (2006). Filial Relations, In Schwehn, M., & Bass, D. (1st ed., pp.306). Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. [Print]. (Original work published 1902). Alvord, L., & Cohen, E. (1999). Life out of Balance. In The scalpel and the silver bear(pp. 58,73-74,76). New York: Bantam Books. Fr. Boyle [Video Clip]. (n.d.).
Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard Medical School graduate and writer for The New Yorker, phenomenally illustrates the unknown side of healthcare professions in his book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. By exploring the ethical and analytical aspects of medicine while entertaining readers with relatable anecdotes, Gawande impresses on his audience the importance of recognizing the wonders of the healthcare field, as well as the fallibility of those within it.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is about the cross-cultural ethics in medicine. The book is about a small Hmong child named Lia Lee, who had epilepsy. Epilepsy is called, quag dab peg1 in the Hmong culture that translates to the spirit catches you and you fall down. In the Hmong culture this illness is sign of distinction and divinity, because most Hmong epileptics become shaman, or as the Hmong call them, txiv neeb2. These shamans are special people imbued with healing spirits, and are held to those having high morale character, so to Lia's parents, Foua Yang and Nao Kao Lee, the disease was both a gift and a curse. The main question in this case was could Lia have survived if her parent's and the doctors overcame the miscommunication, cultural racism, and the western way of medicine.
...ation could have been improved between doctors and patients in simple ways. Interpreters were used and children went to school and helped translate for family members. These helped communication somewhat, but it wasn’t enough. There may not have been any other way to help, but some people tried to and doctors tried to be patient with the Hmong to understand what they wanted and to make them understand what was going on.
The inability to achieve “work-life balance” has become a major focus for workplace equality activists. When this topic is brought about it is primarily used to describe how woman cannot have a work and home life but instead are forced to choose. Richard Dorment took on this point of interest from a different perspective in his article “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” published with esquire. Going against the normal trend he describes how women are not the only ones put into the same sacrificial situations, but instead that men and women alike struggle to balance work and home. Dorment opens up by saying “And the truth is as shocking as it is obvious: No one can have it all.” In doing so Richard Dorment throws out the notion that one
In examining and learning from her story through the lens of Doctoring, we can inform our own practice and However, many or most of the people involved in her story felt as though they committed no wrongdoing, and indeed likely felt good about providing care for a poor black woman. It is a little frightening to consider that we might one day do things as physicians that will be considered as wildly unethical in our practice as the actions of researchers and physicians that affected Henrietta and her family. It is certain that we will be affected by our biases, that we will fumble, and that we will make many mistakes as we try to find our footing as physicians. However, I would argue that the crucial first step lies in the words that Rebecca Skloot used to begin her retelling of Henrietta’s story.
His audience can see, from his initial introduction to language, to his cultural education, to his superiors’ reaction to his literacy, that Baca’s willingness to speak out, to write poetry, and to communicate are inherent acts of resistance and revolution, no matter how inconsequential they may seem at face value. As his memoir is a depiction of a real life, whether liberation is or is not achieved is up for debate (if liberation is achievable at all), but, through the use of language, Baca establishes the beginning of his resistance to many of the vicious cycles which marginalization can perpetuate, a form of resistance that will hopefully continue on to aid the generations that may follow in his footsteps. Through language, Baca finds his self-worth and is able to acknowledge the systematic injustices that have plagued and destroyed facets of himself, as well as most of his family. Though language does not provide the opportunity to entirely reconstruct what has been lost, it can act as a safeguard against the possibility of even more devastation. Thus, the existence of A Place to Stand is a form of resistance in itself. Just like other texts by incarcerated figures, such as Wall Tappings and Mother California, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s memoir is a staunch reminder that incarcerated men and women desperately and unequivocally believe they need to be
Traditional Hmong’s believe in their Shaman rather than western doctors, they choose to detain their treatment by hosting their rituals to save them. A shaman is “a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness, foretell the future, control spiritual forces, etc” (dictionary.com). Hmong individual’s have a belief that ancestral spirits, including the spirits of shamans, are reincarnated into the same family tree. Hmong consider being a shaman an honor because they carry the duty of helping mankind according to Hmong mythology. Differences between Hmong traditional beliefs and Western biomedical beliefs create a lack of understanding. Negative health care experiences result in Hmong community members’ mistrust and fear of Western medicine. However, when there’s mistrust between a doctor and a patient there could be lack of treatment because of the differences between our ...
As part of my Culture, Health and Illness class, I undertook a critical analysis of the book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” by Anne Fadiman. This book was published in 1997, and documents the struggle of a Hmong family from Laos in communicating with and understanding the American health system.
Doing solely what an individual loves is a self-centered view of the world. While it is important to chase happiness, it is also important to reflect on what one is doing to spread happiness to the rest of the world. One must find something that they are good at, and put that into the world. They should contribute to others and help the world be better, in addition to following their passions. An individual’s acts of service may just become one of their many passions.
It is important to consider that the Hmong had their own way of spiritual beliefs and religious healing practices. However, after the community decided to exclude Lia from the applications and advantages of modern medicine, the condition of the young girl worsened (Parish, 2004, p. 131). It was not at all wrong to humanize medicine, but apparently, as a multi-cultural community, the Hmong people became too ignorant and indignant over the applications and benefits of modern medicine applications. Staying firm over their religious affiliations and conduct, the maximum effect of healing became misaligned and ineffective. This was the misunderstanding that should be cleared in the story. There would have been probable results if the Hmong community chose to collaborate with the modern society without needing to disregard or compromise their own values and religious affiliations and
Farrar, 2014 In the U.S., the therapeutic group seldom has approaches to correspond with individuals of societies so drastically unique in relation to standard American society; even a great interpreter will think that it troublesome deciphering ideas between the two separate societies' reality ideas. American specialists, not at all like Hmong shamans, regularly physically touch and cut into the collections of their patients and utilize an assortment of capable medications and meds.
Previous generations have a strong belief of keeping work and home life separate; that work is for work and home is for play (Rampell, 2011, para 21). Today’s professionals do not seem to abide by similar beliefs, constantly crossing the borders of one into the other. While many recognize this as an issue that could result in employees being less productive, it has actually resulted in them accepting that their work may run late into the evening or even into the weekend. I agree with this completely in that I grew up being taught that business is business and personal is personal; you leave your home life at the door. But now times have changed, and my weekends are no longer dedicated to my home life, but for work, because I attend classes during the week. Also, in my line of work in the Allied Health industry, it is a requirement to work off hours. Long gone are the days of working nine to five, Monday through Friday; technology and the demand of wanting affairs done and done as soon as possible, has made it so the “work week” is now 24-7. “Jon Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard Institute of Politics, said, ‘Some experts also believe that today’s young people are better at quickly switching from one task to another, given their exposure to so many stimuli during their childhood and adolescence’” (Rampbell,
In fact, Native American medicine men belief is firmly grounded in age-old traditions, legends and teachings. Healing and medical powers have existed since the very beginning of time according to Native American stories. Consequently they have handed down the tribe's antediluvian legends, which i...
Mona Counts works in the village of Mt. Morris, Pennsylvania. It is a medically underserved area and a HPSA (health professional shortage area). The town has an extremely poor economic base and majority of Mona’s patient population are poverty level. Mona is not worried about the money and will tell a patient to come in for a check up, regardless of whether or not they have health care. One patient said, “she is old-fashioned, she talks to you and tells you what you nee...
Intro: Have you ever heard of a book called Secrets of Bearhaven? If you have not you are missing out on one of the best books of the New Year. It is about a boy named Spencer that learns his parents work with intelligent bears but have been captured.