First, Do No Harm: Power, Oppression, and Violence in Healthcare / Edition 1

by Nancy L. Diekelmann

Overview

First, Do No Harm shows how health care professionals, with the best intentions of providing excellent, holistic health care, can nonetheless perpetuate violence against vulnerable patients. The essays investigate the need to rethink contemporary healthcare practices in ways that can bring the art and science of medicine back into sorely needed balance.
    These ground-breaking studies by noted scholars question commonly held assumptions in contemporary healthcare that underlie oppressive power dynamics and even violence for patients and their families. The contributors discuss such topics as women and violence, life-support technologies, and healthcare professionals’ own experiences as patients. First, Do No Harm opens the discourse for reaching new understandings, from reassessing the meaning of "quality of life" to questioning the appropriateness of the very language used by healthcare professionals. It will be welcomed by healthcare workers and by scholars in nursing, medicine, and the allied health sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299177843
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	07/16/2002
Series:	Interpretive Studies in Healthcare and the Human Sciences , #1
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Nancy L. Diekelmann is the Helen Denne Schulte Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a past president of the Society for Research in Nursing Education. Her many books include Primary Health Care of the Well Adult and Transforming R.N. Education, both of which received Book of the Year awards from the American Journal of Nursing.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Foreword	xiii
	Introduction	xvii
1.	Harming Patients in the Name of Quality of Life	3
2.	Neither Here Nor There: The Story of a Health Professional's Experience With Getting Care and Needing Caring	49
3.	Living a Life-Sustained-By-Medical-Technology: Dialysis Is Killing Me	118
4.	The Violence of the Everyday in Healthcare	164
5.	Telling Stories of Suffering and Survival: Women and Violence	204
	Contributors	253
	Index	257

What People are Saying About This

Diane Tomasic

**Description**
This book, the first volume in the series entitled Interpretive Studies in Healthcare and the Human Sciences, describes how power, oppression, and violence are experienced as people struggle while receiving healthcare.

**Purpose**
The purpose of the series is to provide a place for interpreted studies to be presented in detail. Specifically, the studies in this volume explain how power, oppression, and violence are implicit in healthcare practices.

**Audience**
The target audience is healthcare workers and scholars in nursing, medicine, and allied health sciences. The contributing authors are involved in hermeneutical methods and interpretive phenomenology.

**Features**
This volume contains five studies, using interpretive methodologies, to describe how power, oppression, and violence are part of "best practices" of healthcare. These studies demonstrate new possibilities to recognize, understand, and overcome oppressive practices.

**Assessment**
This book, and the series, provide the opportunity to participate in a conversation about selected contemporary issues in healthcare and human sciences. Contributors will be using various interpretive approaches to explore the issues.

Weighted Numerical Score: 100 - 5 Stars!
— RN(West Liberty State College)

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Diane M Tomasic, EdD, RN (Slippery Rock University )
Description: This book, the first volume in the series entitled Interpretive Studies in Healthcare and the Human Sciences, describes how power, oppression, and violence are experienced as people struggle while receiving healthcare.
Purpose: The purpose of the series is to provide a place for interpreted studies to be presented in detail. Specifically, the studies in this volume explain how power, oppression, and violence are implicit in healthcare practices.
Audience: The target audience is healthcare workers and scholars in nursing, medicine, and allied health sciences. The contributing authors are involved in hermeneutical methods and interpretive phenomenology.
Features: This volume contains five studies, using interpretive methodologies, to describe how power, oppression, and violence are part of "best practices" of healthcare. These studies demonstrate new possibilities to recognize, understand, and overcome oppressive practices.
Assessment: This book, and the series, provide the opportunity to participate in a conversation about selected contemporary issues in healthcare and human sciences. Contributors will be using various interpretive approaches to explore the issues.

Doody's Review Service

5 Stars! from Doody

"An impressive step forward in the dialogue about improving health care in the global situation where many factors, such as biotechnology and profit, seem to have the upper hand in the value system."—Jody Glittenberg, University of Arizona

From the Publisher