Caring and Well-being A Lifeworld Approach Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Health and Illness Series

Something is missing in contemporary health and social care. Health and illness is often measured in policy documents in economic terms, and clinical outcomes are enmeshed in statistical data, with the patient?s experience left to one side. This stimulating book is concerned with how to humanise health and social care and keep the person at the centre of practice.

Caring and Well-Being

• presents an innovative lifeworld-led approach to the humanisation of care;
• explores the concept of well-being and its relationship to suffering and outlines the rationale for a focus on them within this approach;
• discusses how the framework can be applied and how health and social practitioners can draw on aesthetic and empathic avenues to help develop their capacity for care;
• provides direction for policy, practice and education.

Investigating what it means to be human in a health and social care context and what the things that make us feel more human are, this book presents new perspectives about how professionals can enhance their capacity for humanly sensitive care. It is a valuable work for all those interested in ideas about care and caring in a health and social context, including psychologists, doctors and nurses.

Introduction: The Need for Humanised Care Part 1: Humanising Healthcare: A Lifeworld Approach 1. A Value Framework for the Humanisation of Care 2. A Lifeworld Approach: Revisiting a Humanising Philosophy that Provides an Experiential Context for Considering Health and Illness 3. Lifeworld-led Healthcare is More than Patient-led Care 4. Caring for a Partner with Alzheimer’s: an Illustration of Research-based Knowledge for Lifeworld-led Care Part 2: Well-being and Suffering: the Focus of Care 5. An Existential Theory of Well-being: ‘Dwelling-Mobility’ 6. Kinds of Well-being: Eighteen Directions for Caring 7. Kinds of Suffering: Caring for Vulnerability 8. An Illustration of Well-being as Dwelling-Mobility: Older Peoples’ Experiences of Living in Rural Areas Part 3: Developing the Capacity to Care 9. The Creativity of ‘Unspecialisation’: Contemplative Knowledge and Practical Wisdom 10. Complex Knowledge to Underpin Caring: Embodied Relational Understanding 11. Embodied Interpretation: One Way of Re-presenting Research Findings that may Serve to Sensitise the Empathic Imagination 12. Embodying Nursing Openheartedness: An Illustration of a Core Capacity for Caring 13. Conclusion: Caring for Well-being

Kathleen Galvin is Professor of Nursing Practice in the Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull, UK.

Les Todres is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Health Philosophy at the School of Health and Social Care, Bournemouth University, UK.