Humanising Health and Social Care
Research into health and social care has achieved substantial advancement in knowledge and improvements in care through its focus on interventions, treatment and cure. Increasing specialisation and technological advances have improved health and wellbeing. On the other hand, there is increasing evidence both in the media, and from qualitative research in particular, that the human dimensions of care can be obscured by an excessively technological and specialised focus.
It is within this context that the Centre for Qualitative Research has developed a dedicated research programme that focuses on the human dimensions of care. As such, we are allied to the newly emergent Global Institute for Research in Humanising Care Contexts, an organisation with partners in ten countries, representing all continents.
In its mission statement, the Global Institute notes that “humanising healthcare has been associated with less suffering and better outcomes, even though the humanising aspect of healthcare are often covert, and difficult to observe or describe; yet if these vital components of care are not emphasised, they remain elusive, omitted from curricula and from professional work. Suffering is unabated.”
Members of the Centre for Qualitative Research are contributing to this dedicated research focus by pursuing the following theoretical, methodological and empirical projects:
- The development of a conceptual framework by which the humanisation (and dehumanisation) of health and social care practice can be understood.
- The development of a new theory of well-being.
- The development of an alternative to patient-led care that we have called lifeworld-led care.
- The development of lifeworld-led education, an educational strategy by which patients and citizens’ human concerns are drawn upon in the education of our health and social care professionals.
- The pursuit of research projects that focus on living with health-related technology such as insulin delivery technology in diabetes and tele-medicine in spinal injury.
- The development of research projects that humanise the public understanding of research findings by utilising tools from the arts and humanities
- The pursuit of research projects that explore living with challenging conditions such as phantom pain, fatigue, and other complex areas that sometimes get lost in the cracks of care priorities.
These projects are examples of a new agenda which moves qualitative research into its next and overdue phase: to enter policy-making, curricula in professional education, and to be meaningfully translated into practice in ways that place people as human beings at the centre of care.
Relevant publications by members:
Galvin, K. T. & Todres, L. (2009) Embodying Nursing Openheartedness: An existential perspective. Journal of Holistic Nursing. Prepublished January 31, 2009: DOI: 10.1177/0898010108323303
Dahlberg, K., Todres, L. & Galvin, K. (2009) Lifeworld-led healthcare is more than patient-led care: the need for an existential theory of well-being. Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy. On-line first.
Todres, L., Galvin, K. & Holloway, I. (2009). The Humanisation of Healthcare: A value framework for Qualitative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being. On-line first.
Todres, L., Galvin, K. & Dahlberg, K. (2007). Lifeworld-led care: Revisiting a humanizing philosophy that integrates emerging trends. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 10(1), 53-63.
Jones, K. (2006) "Informal Care as Relationship: the Case of the Magnificent Seven" Journal of Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing, 13: 214-220.
Todres, L & Galvin, K (2006). Caring for a partner with Alzheimer’s: intimacy, loss and the life that is possible. QHW: Internationa Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being. 1, 50-56
Galvin, K., Todres, L.& Richardson, M. (2005). The intimate mediator: a carer’s experience of Alzheimer’s. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Science, 19, 2-11.
Wu, E., Rapport, F., Jones, K., Greenhalgh, T. (2004) “Soldiers become casualties: Doctors’ accounts of the SARS epidemic," Ch. in Narrative Research in Health & Illness, T. Greenhalgh, B. Hurwitz & V. Skultans (eds), London: BMJ Books.
Todres, L. (2002) Humanising Forces: Phenomenology in Science; Psychotherapy in Technological Culture. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 3, 1-16.
