What, exactly, is suffering?

  

What, exactly, is suffering? 

One patient with cancer of the stomach, from which he knew he would shortly die, said he was not suffering. Another, someone who had been operated on for a minor problem with little pain and not seemingly distressed-said that even coming into the hospital had been a source of pain and suffering. With such varied responses to the problem of suffering, inevitable questions arise. Is it the doctor's responsibility to treat the disease or the patient? And what is the relationship between suffering and the goals of medicine?

Ideas in Conflict: The Rise and Fall of New Views of Disease - discusses the changing concept of the ideal physician. It begins by presenting four points in relation to the changes in the character of physicians before moving on to discussing the effects of science on the ideal of the doctor, the impact of technology as distinct from science, and the changes in the doctor-patient relationship. There is increasing interest in medical ethics and the concept of commercialism.

Suffering and its nature have been given little attention despite the fact that physicians are obligated to relieve human suffering. Theren are three main points: suffering is experienced by persons, suffering occurs when the impending destruction of a person is perceived, and suffering can occur in relation to any aspect of a person.

Suffering from Chronic Illness - It starts with a definition of chronic illness and its symptoms. It is the one of the alterations produced by chronic illness, which is a changing perception of the world, and also presents several strategies for reducing suffering.

There is relationship between doctor and patient. This refers to the central and basic relationship between doctor and patient that rests solely on the fact that one is a patient and the other is a doctor. The physician as a person, what defines a good physician, and the relation between trust and altruism. It centres on self-discipline, which is necessary not only for thoroughness but also for the maintenance of knowledge, patient consistency, and nerves.

The Mysterious Relationship Between Doctor and Patient: - 1. The Physician as a Person. 2. What Defines a Good Physician. 3. The Relation Between Trust and Altruism. 4. Self-Discipline.

The difficult issues that must be faced and solved before shifting the primary concern from diseases to a focus on sick persons. It shows why disease theory has been so necessary and successful for clinicians or the doctors who actually take care of the patients. What are common diseases to show how the ideas contained in classic disease theory are exemplified and used in the practice of medicine. Also, the practical consequences of the changes that have taken place in the axioms of disease theory over the last few decades.

There is relationship between the sick person and the sickness and between the disease entity and its existence in a sick person. It examines the place of symptoms in medical care and how these symptoms become symptoms for the patient. The relationship of a symptom to suffering which determines real: symptoms or diseases.

The Pursuit of Disease or the Care of the Sick?

"             "Doctor, What Is Wrong with Me?"

"             How Symptoms Get to Be Symptoms for the Patient

"             The Relationship of a Symptom to Suffering

"             Which Is Real, Symptoms or Diseases?

"             Who Puts Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again?

"             "Have You Found the Cause of My …"

"             An Illness Is a Story

There is relationship between treatment of disease, the body, or the patient. It first looks at identifying the best treatment and then moves on to the effects of patients on treatments. The concepts of placebo, treatment of the patient, and treatment in chronic illness are also discussed.

Treating the Disease, the Body, or the Patient

"             Identifying the Best Treatment

"             The Effects of Patients on Treatments

"             The Placebo

"             Treatment of This Patient

"             Treatment in Chronic Illness

"             Doctor, What is Going to Happen to Me?

Know areas of medicine such as ethics to see how they would fare if medicine's primary focus were on something other than the disease itself.

It begins by examining the problems that would arise if the sick person became the central concern of medicine and physicians. So the search for a new basis for clinical medicine and provides a number of solutions. Knowing and attempting to know a person over time. It is believed that individuals are unknowable in their entirety due to the fact that people change constantly and that a person can only see one aspect of an individual at any moment.

How to know people through their narratives and looks at personal logic, social constraints, and disinterest in the nature of the person?

There are three kinds of information, namely empirical facts, value-laden terms, and aesthetics. It shows that this information about sick persons is necessary for the work of clinicians, and it also attempts to show that clinicians treat particular patients in particular circumstances at particular moments in time, thus requiring information that particularizes the individual and the moment.

Importance is the experience of the clinician, beginning with the science and art of the practice of medicine. It then moves on to the importance of the clinician's experience, the relation of knowledge to experience, and why experience has a bad name. It has advantage of experience, the physician as the instrument, and how experience is able to mediate between science and art. It also looks at the experience of uncertainty.

It should be, how does the mind act on the body? It presents a thesis that pertains to meanings and the things people do, the former being essential to the latter.

Know the concept of the mind while considering the concept of disease. Whether psychosomatic medicine, how the activities of thought influence the body, the flow of meaning, the coda, and the special case of preverbal children. Understand two cases of women who have breast cancer, which demonstrate that there are meanings attached to the visible symbols of a disease or illness. Some of these meanings are related to the ideas of powerlessness.

Then what is pain and suffering. It is concerned with symptoms and how the nature of the person modifies them. Two steps of pain before looking at its progression to suffering and also looks at the failure to treat suffering, which is a phenomenon that cannot be separated from suffering.

All requires deep thinking and experience.