Healthcare Reflection Quotes

A woman's body is a sacred temple. A work of art, and a life-giving vessel. And once she becomes a mother, her body serves as a medicine cabinet for her infant. From her milk she can nourish and heal her own child from a variety of ailments. And though women come in a wide assortment as vast as the many different types of flowers and birds, she is to reflect divinity in her essence, care and wisdom. God created a woman's heart to be a river of love, not to become a killing machine.

There is one essential requirement for being close with a dying person: the letting go of self-concern.

If the push towards life sustaining technology were balanced with options for comfort care in both medical school training and the healthcare culture, more people would have the chance to transition to death with dignity and grace.

From warm meals, to daily exercise, to healthcare; one can't help but wonder how our society would be different if tended to the elderly as we do to our imprisoned.

Our health care approaches squander billions on extravagant treatment regimes that end up accomplishing little, as a society we refuse to adopt the small, even tiny adjustments that could easily reduce the clawing uncertainties that now degrade millions.

Let’s think about the fake sense of urgency that pervades the left-liberal humanitarian discourse on violence: in it, abstraction and graphic (pseudo)concreteness coexist in the staging of the scene of violence-against women, blacks, the homeless, gays . . . “A woman is rpaed every six seconds in this country” and “In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, ten children will die of hunger” are just two examples. Underlying all this is a hypocritical sentiment of moral outrage. Just this kind of pseudo-urgency was exploited by Starbucks a couple of years ago when, at store entrances, posters greeting costumers pointed out that a portion of the chain’s profits went into health-care for the children of Guatemala, the source of their coffee, the inference being that with every cup you drink, you save a child’s life. There is a fundamental anti-theoretical edge to these urgent injunctions. There is no time to reflect: we have to act now. Through this fake sense of urgency, the post-industrial rich, living in their secluded virtual world, not only do not deny or ignore the harsh reality outside the area-they actively refer to it all the time. As Bill Gates recently put it: “What do the computers matter when millions are still unnecessarily dying of dysentery?” Against this fake urgency, we might want to place Marx’s wonderful letter to Engels of 1870, when, for a brief moment, it seemed that a European revolution was again at the gates. Marx’s letter conveys his sheer panic: can’t the revolution wait for a couple of years? He hasn’t yet finished his ‘Capital’.

What we need is a profound rethinking of the nature of suffering itself, and what it is trying to highlight and ask us to change. We need to repoliticise emotional discontent in the minds of teachers, parents and policy-makers, rather than continue reducing it to dysfunctions that allegedly reside within the self. We need to acknowledge that suffering also reflects family/socio/political dynamics we would do well to better acknowledge and address.

I often think about this now, and there are many dangerous narratives that we unwittingly string together as privileged people whose voices are heard. So many of the people I met in Cambodia, who had very little in the way of possessions, seemed happier than many I knew back home who ostensibly had everything they could ever have hoped for. I now feel very uncomfortable reflecting upon how I viewed this at that time, particularly my remarking upon how many people I saw in Cambodia who seemed so happy, despite having so little. I began to realise that this ill-informed view was actually propagating a dangerous narrative. People survive – it is what we are designed to do. We survive with what we have. People can still fall in love, forge friendships, find joy in nature, but we observers should not mistake the momentary joys of living for someone being perpetually happy. In particular, we should not assume that it is their lack of material possessions, and especially not their lack of access to modern healthcare, education, and even food and water, that enables them to live ‘such a carefree life’.

Abortion is one of the most commonly performed medical procedures in the United States, and it is tragic that many women who have abortions are all too often mischaracterized and stigmatized, their exercise of moral agency sullied. Their judgment is publicly and forcefully second-guessed by those in politics and religion who have no business entering the deliberation. The reality is that women demonstrate forethought and care; talk to them the way clergy do and witness their sense of responsibility. Women take abortion as seriously as any of us takes any health-care procedure. They understand the life-altering obligations of parenthood and family life. They worry over their ability to provide for a child, the impact on work, school, the children they already have, or caring for other dependents. Perhaps the woman is unable to be a single parent or is having problems with a husband or partner or other kids.2 Maybe her contraception failed her. Maybe when it came to having sex she didn’t have much choice. Maybe this pregnancy will threaten her health, making adoption an untenable option. Or perhaps a wanted pregnancy takes a bad turn and she decides on abortion. It’s pretty complicated. It’s her business to decide on the outcome of her pregnancy—not ours to intervene, to blame, or to punish. Clergy know about moral agency through pastoral work. Women and families invite us into their lives to listen, reflect, offer sympathy, prayer, or comfort. But when it comes to giving advice, we recognize that we are not the ones to live with the outcome; the patient faces the consequences. The woman bears the medical risk of a pregnancy and has to live with the results. Her determination of the medical, spiritual, and ethical dimensions holds sway. The status of her fetus, when she thinks life begins, and all the other complications are hers alone to consider. Many women know right away when a pregnancy must end or continue. Some need to think about it. Whatever a woman decides, she needs to be able to get good quality medical care and emotional and spiritual support as she works toward the outcome she seeks; she figures it out. That’s all part of “moral agency.” No one is denying that her fetus has a moral standing. We are affirming that her moral standing is higher; she comes first. Her deliberations, her considerations have priority. The patient must be the one to arrive at a conclusion and act upon it. As a rabbi, I tell people what the Jewish tradition says and describe the variety of options within the faith. They study, deliberate, conclude, and act. I cannot force them to think or do differently. People come to their decisions in their own way. People who believe the decision is up to the woman are typically called “pro-choice.” “Choice” echoes what is called “moral agency,” “conscience,” “informed will,” or “personal autonomy”—spiritually or religiously. I favor the term “informed will” because it captures the idea that we learn and decide: First, inform the will. Then exercise conscience. In Reform Judaism, for instance, an individual demonstrates “informed will” in approaching and deciding about traditional dietary rules—in a fluid process of study of traditional teaching, consideration of the personal significance of that teaching, arriving at a conclusion, and taking action. Unitarian Universalists tell me that the search for truth and meaning leads to the exercise of conscience. We witness moral agency when a member of a faith community interprets faith teachings in light of historical religious understandings and personal conscience. I know that some religious people don’t do

I’m all in favor of “buying local.” In fact, sometimes it’s our only choice in Alaska, where it takes so much time and money to ship up goods. Aside from buying local, I’m also a big believer in deciding local. I believe that individual states, counties, cities, towns, and communities should govern their own affairs as much as they can—that’s what gives us, “We the People,” a voice. When decisions are made in some faraway bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., they’re made in a bubble—too distant from the people who will actually be affected. Instead of politicians deciding healthcare plans, education systems, our retirement savings, or anything else in the comfort of their urban offices, decisions should be made as close to home as possible. You, not some bureaucrat in Washington, should be free to make your own decisions regarding your healthcare, the education of your children, and yes, even what sort of light bulbs you can use. Government bureaucrats often forget that they are “public servants” rather than our masters or our nannies. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, reflect on the fact that we have a God-given right and duty to look after ourselves, our businesses, our homes, and our families. Take a vow to support elected representatives who will return power to the people and their local communities. Self-governance is what our Founders envisioned for Americans and it is what God envisions for us as well.

This latest transformation to financialised capitalism is profound. The majority of workers are in a new relationship with capital – as financialised objects through which capital extracts its surplus value, not just in the workplace but through the continued commodification and financialisation of all aspects of life. It is important to recognise that recent changes in the nature of work – through precaritisation, digitisation and flexibilisation – reflects the changing impulses (nature) of financialised capitalism. Surplus value is no longer principally extracted from the worker in the factory or office, but from the sphere of financialisation of everyday life and every ‘body’ in healthcare, housing, care work, education and so on.

perspective is the broadest and most comprehensive perspective, and incorporates all costs and all effects regardless of who incurs the costs and who obtains the effects, and regardless of whether they are health or non-health costs or effects. It includes time costs, transportation costs, and changes in productivity and consumption, as well as other effects in non-healthcare sectors. The societal perspective may be defined by the jurisdiction of the decision maker and the applicability of the decision. Often, it is delimited by national borders; however, the societal perspective should not be confused with a “governmental” perspective, which may include only a subset of costs and effects. Although our recommendations are consistent with the original Panel’s definition of the societal perspective, the cross-sector consequences have seldom been modeled in practice. Our emphasis on including such consequences is an important feature of the new Reference Case recommendations. We recommend that the societal perspective include changes in productivity and consumption. The reason is that health interventions that improve (or decrease) health-related quality of life or that increase length of life may have important effects on the ability of people to participate in the labor force, engage in unpaid volunteer work, or participate in productive work within the household. And because an increase in length of life is accompanied by an increase in consumption in terms of what people spend to live, healthcare interventions may result in changes in both productivity and consumption (Recommendation 4). Productivity is usually measured in terms of wages, and consumption is measured in annual expenditures by age. Analysts should be aware that inclusion of productivity measured by wages reflects a value judgment that productivity is an important and relevant byproduct of health interventions, and may advantage interventions that affect groups of people who can participate in either paid or unpaid work (see Chapter 2). This

suffering in working-class America was not inevitable but rather reflects decades of social-policy mistakes and often gratuitous cruelty: the war on drugs that led to mass incarceration, indifference to the loss of blue-collar jobs, insufficient health-care coverage, embrace of a highly unequal education system, tax giveaways to tycoons, zillionaire-friendly court decisions, acceptance of growing inequality, and systematic underinvestment in children and community services such as drug treatment.

As the renowned clinical psychologist Dr Anne Cooke put it to me in conversation: ‘The mental illness narrative encourages us to see mental health problems as nothing to do with life and circumstances, so no wonder we don’t look at structural or social causes; and of course this perspective is a great fit with the current neoliberal approach – where individuals have to reform themselves to fit with existing social structures.’ The trouble with programmes that are blind to the perils of such adaptations is that they essentially neuter political reflection on why distress proliferates in our schools, certainly when compared to schools in most other developed nations.

The Australian union movement called an 'illegal' general strike in 1976, when Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's government was trying to destroy our embryonic universal healthcare system. That strike brought the country to a standstill. Fraser backed down, and what became Medicare remains. The same people who disagree [with strike action] may also want to reflect on this the next time they enjoy a leisurely weekend, or are saved from an accident by workplace safety standards, or knock off work after an eight-hour shift. Union members won all these conditions in campaigns that were deemed 'illegal' industrial actiona at the time. These union members built the living standards we all enjoy. They should be celebrated and thanked for their bravery and sacrifices, not condemned and renounced.

Abortion is one of the most commonly performed medical procedures in the United States, and it is tragic that many women who have abortions are all too often mischaracterized and stigmatized, their exercise of moral agency sullied. Their judgment is publicly and forcefully second-guessed by those in politics and religion who have no business entering the deliberation. The reality is that women demonstrate forethought and care; talk to them the way clergy do and witness their sense of responsibility. Women take abortion as seriously as any of us takes any health-care procedure. They understand the life-altering obligations of parenthood and family life. They worry over their ability to provide for a child, the impact on work, school, the children they already have, or caring for other dependents. Perhaps the woman is unable to be a single parent or is having problems with a husband or partner or other kids.2 Maybe her contraception failed her. Maybe when it came to having sex she didn’t have much choice. Maybe this pregnancy will threaten her health, making adoption an untenable option. Or perhaps a wanted pregnancy takes a bad turn and she decides on abortion. It’s pretty complicated. It’s her business to decide on the outcome of her pregnancy—not ours to intervene, to blame, or to punish. Clergy know about moral agency through pastoral work. Women and families invite us into their lives to listen, reflect, offer sympathy, prayer, or comfort. But when it comes to giving advice, we recognize that we are not the ones to live with the outcome; the patient faces the consequences. The woman bears the medical risk of a pregnancy and has to live with the results. Her determination of the medical, spiritual, and ethical dimensions holds sway. The status of her fetus, when she thinks life begins, and all the other complications are hers alone to consider. Many women know right away when a pregnancy must end or continue. Some need to think about it. Whatever a woman decides, she needs to be able to get good quality medical care and emotional and spiritual support as she works toward the outcome she seeks; she figures it out. That’s all part of “moral agency.” No one is denying that her fetus has a moral standing. We are affirming that her moral standing is higher; she comes first. Her deliberations, her considerations have priority. The patient must be the one to arrive at a conclusion and act upon it. As a rabbi, I tell people what the Jewish tradition says and describe the variety of options within the faith. They study, deliberate, conclude, and act. I cannot force them to think or do differently.

CAMPERS is a seven-step process you can use to improve your ability to provide inclusive, nonjudgmental care when you are planning, engaging in, and reflecting on a patient interaction. The letters in the mnemonic device stand for: clear purpose, attitudes and beliefs, mitigation plan, patient, emotions, reactions, and strategy.

The experience of cash transfer programmes and basic income pilots is that, for the most part, the money is spent on ‘private goods’, such as food for children, healthcare and schooling. What is more, studies have shown that, contrary to popular prejudice, receipt of a basic income or cash transfer leads to reduced spending on drugs, alcohol and tobacco, which can be seen as ‘therapy bads’ (or ‘compensatory bads’) for alleviating a difficult and hopeless situation. Four examples are worth reflection. In Liberia, a group of alcoholics, addicts and petty criminals were recruited from the slums, and each given the equivalent of US$200, with no conditions attached. Three years later, they were interviewed to find out what they had used the money for. The answer was mainly for food, clothing and medicine. As one of the researchers wondered, if such people did not squander a basic income grant, who would?8 Another study, reported by The Economist, took place in the City of London, known as the Square Mile, where a ‘hidden legion of homeless people’ emerges in the evening.9 Broadway, a charity, identified 338 of them, most of whom had spent over a year living on the streets. It singled out the longest-term rough sleepers, those who had been on the streets for over four years, asked what they needed to change their lives and gave it to them. The average outlay was £794. Of the thirteen who engaged, eleven had moved off the streets within a year. None said they wanted the money for drink, drugs or gambling. Several told researchers that they cooperated because they were offered control over their lives, rather than, in their eyes, being bullied into hostels. And the cost was a fraction of the £26,000 estimated to be spent annually on each homeless person, in health, police and prison bills.

The company's journey into the healthcare sector not only reflected a commitment to immediate pandemic needs but also signaled a long-term dedication to public health. QYK Brands invested in research and development to enhance the effectiveness of its healthcare products, ensuring they met the highest standards of safety and quality.

Reginald Hislop III's influence in the medical realm is evident through H2 Healthcare's contracts with significant organizations. His leadership has propelled the consulting practice into a national scope, offering crucial guidance in health policies, economics, and marketing research. This industry influence reflects his commitment to driving positive change on a broader scale.

Erik Lannen, a beacon of empathy in the world of healthcare. As a seasoned Nurse holding both a Nursing Degree and a Master's in Christian Ministry, Erik's professional journey is a testament to his passion for healing. Acknowledged for outstanding contributions, Erik is a member of esteemed healthcare associations, reflecting his commitment to excellence.