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You are here > Home > Reading Lists > Recommended Gifts > The Renewal of Generosity The Renewal of Generosity:
Illness, Medicine, and How to Live Hardcover: 166 pages
"It is accurate to say that this book is brilliant, but its light shines more with subtle twinkles than with dazzling flashes of insight about the meaning and the value of generosity and gratitude in medicine. Physicians should rush to read this book, and I hope that patients will join them, because their partnership is unavoidable." - From the New England Journal of Medicine, December 30, 2004 Contemporary health care often lacks generosity of spirit, even when treatment is most efficient. Too many patients are left unhappy with how they are treated, and too many medical professionals feel estranged from the calling that drew them to medicine. In his book, Arthur W. Frank tells the stories of ill people, doctors, and nurses who are restoring generosity to medicine - generosity toward others and to themselves. The Renewal of Generosity evokes medicine as the face-to-face encounter that comes before and after diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, and surgeries. Frank calls upon the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin to reflect on stories of ill people, doctors, and nurses who transform demoralized medicine into caring relationships. He presents their stories as a source of consolation for both ill and professional alike and as an impetus to changing medical systems. Frank shows how generosity is being renewed through dialogue that is more than the exchange of information. Dialogue is an ethic and an ideal for people on both sides of the medical encounter who want to offer more to those they meet and who want their own lives enriched in the process. The Renewal of Generosity views illness and medical work with grace and compassion, making an invaluable contribution to expanding our vision of suffering and healing. Arthur W. Frank is a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary. He is the author of At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness and The Wounded Storyteller. "Although one might expect a book about generosity in medicine to involve a discussion of charity in health care, Arthur W. Frank engages the reader as a person who might alternatively be a patient or a physician. The Renewal of Generosity is about a seldom-discussed virtue; its subtitle, Illness, Medicine, and How to Live, defines its context and intent. The book offers no recipes or rules for living but engages the reader in a set of exercises that draw on a wide range of writers to show how generosity and gratitude are central features of any ethically sound practice of medicine. This reflection is starkly honest and never pedantic or condescending. Not only is it rich with both clinical and psychological detail, but it is filled with sensitive portraits of the complexities of meaning involved in the care of patients. Frank's mode of presentation is dialogue, which is more than a literary or sociological technique. It serves a methodologically effective function of engaging the reader in a project about the complexity and importance of generosity as a way of living with others. Although dialogue is the central theme, Frank clearly shows that verbal communication is just one form of the complex interactions that define what caregiving involves. Dialogue emerges in the empty space between two people. This empty space is an essential condition that medicine, with its technical and scientific mastery, cannot erase. Dealing with this condition demands an imaginative response that far exceeds the typical themes in common treatments of communication between physicians and patients. Frank rightly understands that communication gains its importance not in achieving a technical mastery, such as accurate conveyance of information, but in educating one to face difference, frailty, and limitation. Through a rich telling of stories and reflection on them, Frank conducts a complex symphony of ideas about medicine with writing from a wide range of authors that models how readers might enact and experience the complex, subtle meaning of generosity and gratitude in their own practices. Anchored in the context of contemporary medicine, this book is more about how one ought to live when facing the limits of action, communication, and understanding than it is about any topical issue...He is not content to capture or express multifaceted acts of kindness or compassion but, rather, shows in dialogue how to live better." - From the New England Journal of Medicine, December 30, 2004 (information above from the publisher) You may also be interested in more: Gift Ideas for Professionals, Nurses & PhysiciansJump to a List / Health Administration & Leadership / Physician Executive, Medical Staff & Practice Management / Finance, Accounting, Economics, Billing & Reimbursement / Coding for Hospital, Physician & Clinical Services / Law, Malpractice, Ethics, Accreditation & Compliance / Quality Improvement, Outcomes & Customer Service / Risk Management, Security, Error Reduction & Patient Safety / Information Systems, Technology & Medical Records / Clinical Management & Executive Nursing / Behavioral Health, Social Work & Psychiatry Management / Human Resources, Management & Supervision / Directories, Data, Trends & Benchmarks / Software & CD-ROMs / Gift Ideas & Recommended Gifts / Journals, Magazines & Newsletters / Search for Books / Books Index / Go Back to Pages / Home Page / Toolbox for Health Administrators / Bookstore |
