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Hope in the Midst of Illness
Hope is a crucial part of facing and coping with a medical illness. It can not only help a patient survive; it can also promote healing. Hope paves the way toward resilience and supports the spirit as...
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Stress: A Part of Our Lives; A Factor in Our Health; A Potential for Growth...
Editor’s Note: This is part one of an excellent review of how stress affects our lives and our health. Part II is available here. Donald M. Friedman, MD Stress is definitely a part of our lives. It is...
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Stress: A Part of Our Lives; A Factor in Our Health; A Potential for Growth...
Editor’s Note: This is part two of an excellent review of how stress affects our lives and our health. Part I is available here. Donald M. Friedman, MD This part of the column deals with living in the...
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Navigating the Doctor-Patient Relationship
A recent issue of Newsweek (April 23&30, 2012) had “The End of the Doctor-Patient Relationship” boldly displayed above the magazine’s logo. Inside, the featured article was actually entitled, “The...
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Living a Satisfying Life While Having a Chronic Illness – Part 1
Receiving a diagnosis of a chronic disease that is treatable, but not curable, manageable, but not always completely controllable, can be a devastating experience. There frequently is an immediate...
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Living a Satisfying Life While Having a Chronic Illness – Part 2
Living with a chronic illness certainly poses many challenges that require inner strength, creativity, adaptation, resiliency, and focus to live as fully as possible under new physical, emotional,...
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Spirituality and Nature
Going out into nature can be a transforming experience. If you’re willing to give yourself over to being in a natural setting or wilderness environment, free from the distractions of our usually busy...
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Dr. Donald Friedman: Dying Well – Observations from bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan
Arthur CaplanI heard a talk last year by Arthur Leonard Caplan, PhD, a well known and well respected bioethicist, who presently is the Director of the Division of Bioethics at New York University. His...
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Mystery and Medicine
Mystery and the unknown have been on my mind recently after facilitating one of the final sessions of The Healer’s Art course for first year medical students who have elected to explore the relational,...
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Touch in Medicine
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]ouch is an essential part of the doctor-patient relationship. On a very basic level, it is assumed that the doctor will touch the patient during the physical exam, in an effort to...
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Spirituality and Health Care: Dr. Donald M. Friedman, M.D.
In recent years, there has been more recognition in the medical field, particularly medical education and physician training, of the importance of spirituality and spiritual issues in the care of...
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The spiritual history
The importance of a patient’s spirituality on the course of a disease and the ability to cope with that disease was mentioned last month. The key to understanding that spirituality can be found in the...
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Finding Meaning in Illness
Very often when a patient is confronted with the diagnosis of a severe illness that can have life-changing consequences or a terminal illness that is actually life threatening, the inevitable questions...
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The Sacred Nature of the Doctor-Patient Relationship
In the fast changing world of modern medicine where new diagnostic techniques, improved therapies, and healthcare insurance debates usually attract the most attention, the doctor-patient relationship...
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Spiritual Distress
Spiritual distress can be a devastating experience. If it occurs during the course of an illness, a time when there is increased likelihood that it can happen, the effects on the patient’s course,...
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Physician as Wounded Healer – Dr. Donald Friedman, MD
The concept of the physician as a wounded healer and how it can positively affect the practice of medicine has been around for a long time. In Greek mythology. Chiron was the first wounded healer. He...
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Why Listening Is So Important
There is a saying about listening that eloquently summarizes the nature of the process. The source of the words is unknown, but the message is universal – “God gave us two ears, but only one mouth....
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Humor, Laughter, Illness, and Health
At first thought, one might wonder what humor and laughter have to do with illness; it doesn’t seem like a very likely mix. But on closer examination, humor and laughter have a large role to play in...
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Everybody’s on the Phone
A friend of mine recently sent me an interesting article from the Sports Section of the New York Times (“Rested and Ready” by Peter Thamel, Aug. 29, 2010, p.13) about Urban Meyer, the very successful...
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Empathy: How Does It Help Us Relate To Others and What Is Its Role in Medicine?
Empathy is a frequently misunderstood term that refers to one’s ability to understand and identify with another person’s emotional experiences and feelings. The true empathic individual is aware and...
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Compassion: What is it? Why is it Powerful? What is its Threatened Role in...
Having compassion is a way of being, thinking, and acting that can be easily misunderstood and misidentified. To show compassion is a way to make the lives of people who receive it better, while also...
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Eight Characteristics That Make A Physician A Healer
The healing potential of the relationship between doctor and patient has long been recognized in the medical field. Much has been written on how the healing that can occur goes way beyond the...
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