The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing

The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing is a pragmatic text assisting nurses at every career level through the challenges and rewards of their everyday duty to care. It advances the seminal work of Drs. Betty Ferrell and Nessa Coyle to give voice to the suffering of patients, their families, and their communities, as well as the suffering of nurses and other clinicians. This second edition has been updated in light of health and social care changes from the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the social determinants of health and increased visibility of marginalized populations across physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, ethical, cultural, and end-of-life domains to support whole-person and whole-people care. Contributing authors emphasize the qualitative experience of those who suffer alongside the best available evidence for person-centered nursing to promote meaning, growth, and introspection within the field of nursing. New and expanded chapters offer broader perspectives of patient populations across diseases and across the lifespan. Concrete steps for nurses to grow toward personal and professional healing and wholeness are provided. Compassionate and holistic, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing reflects the lived experience of patients, families, and communities at the intersection of high-quality evidence, offering a rare window into what it means to practice nursing today in response to the suffering of those they serve. Cover The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing Copyright Contents Preface Contributors 1. The Nature of Suffering and the Practice of Nursing 2. Spiritual and Religious Perspectives About Suffering 3. Existential Suffering 4. Pain and Suffering 5. Suffering of Infants, Parents, and Families 6. Suffering in Serious Pediatric Illness 7. Suffering of Older People 8. Suffering Related to Mental Health Challenges and Traumatic Events 9. Suffering in Acute and Critical Care 10. Suffering in Chronic Illness 11. Suffering in the Context of Cancer 12. Bearing Witness to Suffering at End of Life 13. Suffering of Caregivers, Loved Ones, and the Community 14. Social Suffering, Biopower, and the Naturalization of Inequality 15. Suffering in the Face of Humanitarian Crises and Emergencies 16. Suffering of Nurses 17. Healing and Wholeness in the Face of Suffering 18. “What Is the Nature of Suffering and What Are the Goals of Nursing?” Index "Humans have long tried to understand - and explain - this fact of the human condition. The ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus, tells us in a tragedy he wrote in the 5th century BCE, Prometheus Bound, that Zeus punished the Titan, Prometheus, with lifelong suffering for having stolen fire and given it to humans.2 Before Prometheus's intervention, fire had only belonged to the gods. Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and sending an eagle to pluck out his liver during the day. At night, his liver regenerated, only for the eagle to return the next day to pluck it away again. Because Prometheus was half human, he felt the pain of the mortal wound inflicted by the eagle, but because he was half divine, he did not die from the wound"-- Provided by publisher