Our personalities and our identities are intimately bound up with the stories that we tell to organize and to make sense of our lives. To understand the human meaning of illness, we therefore must turn to the stories we tell about illness, suffering, and medical care. Stories of Sickness explores the many dimensions of what illness means to the sufferers and to those around them, drawing on depictions of illness in great works of literature and in non-fiction accounts. The exploration is primarily philosophical but incorporates approaches from literature and from the medical social sciences. When it was first published in 1987, Stories of Sickness helped to inaugurate a renewed interest in the importance of narrative studies in health care. For the Second Edition the text has been thoroughly revised and significantly expanded. Four almost entirely new chapters have been added on the nature, complexities, and rigor of narrative ethics and how it is carried out. There is also an additional chapter on maladaptive ways of being sick that deals in greater depth with disability issues. Health care professionals, students of medicine and bioethics, and ordinary people coping with illness, no less than scholars in the health care humanities and social sciences, will find much of value in this volume.Unique Features:*Philosophically sophisticated yet clearly written and easily accessible*Interdisciplinary approachcombines philosophy, literature, health care, social sciences*Contains many fascinating stories and vignettes of illness drawn from both fiction and nonfiction*A new and comprehensive overview of the "hot topic" of narrative ethics in medicine and health care
Our personalities and our identities are intimately bound up with the stories that we tell to organize and to make sense of our lives. To understand the human meaning of illness, we therefore must turn to the stories we tell about illness, suffering, and medical care. Stories of Sickness explores the many dimensions of what illness means to the sufferers and to those around them, drawing on depictions of illness in great works of literature and in non-fiction accounts. The exploration is primarily philosophical but incorporates approaches from literature and from the medical social sciences. When it was first published in 1987, Stories of Sickness helped to inaugurate a renewed interest in the importance of narrative studies in health care. For the Second Edition the text has been thoroughly revised and significantly expanded. Four almost entirely new chapters have been added on the nature, complexities, and rigor of narrative ethics and how it is carried out. There is also an additional chapter on maladaptive ways of being sick that deals in greater depth with disability issues. Health care professionals, students of medicine and bioethics, and ordinary people coping with illness, no less than scholars in the health care humanities and social sciences, will find much of value in this volume.Unique Features:*Philosophically sophisticated yet clearly written and easily accessible*Interdisciplinary approachcombines philosophy, literature, health care, social sciences*Contains many fascinating stories and vignettes of illness drawn from both fiction and nonfiction*A new and comprehensive overview of the "hot topic" of narrative ethics in medicine and health care
Barnes & Noble is the world’s largest retail bookseller and a leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. Our Nook Digital business offers a lineup of NOOK® tablets and e-Readers and an expansive collection of digital reading content through the NOOK Store®. Barnes & Noble’s mission is to operate the best omni-channel specialty retail business in America, helping both our customers and booksellers reach their aspirations, while being a credit to the communities we serve.