Themes on Healing and Example Quotations From Patient and Clinician Groups
| Theme | Speaker |
|---|---|
| LPN=licensed practical nurse; MA=medical assistant; RN=registered nurse. | |
| Note: Mixed groups included a variety of patients and clinician types. | |
| 1. Healing is multidimensional and holistic | |
| Healing is more mental than physical. It’s holistic, spiritual, emotional, and physiologic | Patient (group 2) |
| I think healing for me is a very complex kind of concept…. There is a mental part, there is a physical part, there is a spiritual part | Physician (group 3) |
| [Wholeness] I think that’s a wonderful word for it. I don’t believe it’s lack of illness, I believe it goes further than that...to include peace of mind. Peace: body, mind, and spirit | RN (group 5) |
| It’s not an organ system. It’s the entire person. The mind, body, spirit, relationships, community, the whole person | LPN/MA (group 7) |
| 2. Healing is a process, a journey | |
| [Healing is]…going through a process of emotions to get over something extremely traumatic that happened | Patient (group 1) |
| Maybe you should call it a path of restoring, so that maybe you don’t get to the end point | Physician (group 3) |
| …sometimes there is going to be two steps forward and one step back, but it’s the journey and skills that they learn along the way, that seems to help the people move and get unstuck and make some steps forward. I think patients need to realize that | RN (group 6) |
| As a doctor, if I can…recognize that healing is this process…. You may not be able to solve the problem that particular day.… That it might take time, that we’re going to have a follow-up. I’m really listening. We only got these 3 things discussed, but I know there’s many…. So, you are establishing a framework that’s open ended | Physician in mixed group (group 8) |
| 3. The goal of healing is recovery or restoration | |
| It’s a restorative process. Regenerative. Restoring something that was lost or the sense of well-being | Patient (group 2) |
| [Healing is] the process of restoring a person’s mental, spiritual, and physical health, which is their suffering part, and removing barriers to the level possible, and then to optimum | Physician (group 3) |
| 4. Healing requires the person to reach a place of personal balance and acceptance | |
| [Healing is] being OK with what you are right now. Acceptance. Living in the day | Patient (group 2) |
| Acceptance and understanding… [I]t’s trying to work toward or move toward having the person be as happy and as functional as they can possibly be, given their problems. Balance when I have sought health care | Physician (group 3) |
| …from my own personal patient experience, I have felt healed. I have felt that something that was amiss or out of balance was brought back in | Individual from mixed group (group 8) |
| Healing is living successfully with whatever challenges you have | Individual in mixed group (group 8) |
| 5. Relationships are essential to healing | |
| Healing is the interpersonal relationships at my clinic and the nurses that took care of me when I was there. It has less to do with the pain and more to do with personal attention | Patient (group 2) |
| It means that it’s just like “Cheers”; people want to go where people know your name | Physician (group 3) |
| I feel that good healing process is when the patient comes familiar with that nurse. Because that trust thing, and plus that they expect we have become like family. I know my patients | LPN/MA (group 7) |