Partners in Healing: Bringing Compassion to People with Illness or Loss--A Handbook

Partners in Healing is a unique and much-needed training program and text designed to help Christian pastoral volunteers who make home visits to the sick, the dying, the elderly, the needy, and their caregivers. It speaks to the crisis in our health care delivery systems, precipitated by shortened hospital stays. At the heart of the text are wide-ranging, instructive and sympathetic essays written by members of the program that offer practical and spiritual advice on such topics as the development of good listening skills and empathy, finding meaning in the experience of loss, and the problems faced by caregivers, particularly by women, who make up "73 percent" of home caregivers. Great emphasis is placed upon the nexus of Christian community that unites the sick and the well, the old and the young, those giving and receiving care. Here is a wise, informative and eminently useful book that addresses a concern facing all of us. This book: * Is requisite for clergy of all faiths, social workers, volunteers, and church organizations who visit the sick and grieving or are learning to do so, and the families of the afflicted. * Includes instruction on prayer, meditation and contemplation; good listening skills and empathy; and dialoguing with the sick and the bereaved. * Includes numerous references from eminent theologians, such as Paul Tillich, Martin Buber and Karl Rahner, to modern-day authors, such as Janet Ruffing.