danu3

You might want to scan the following classics (a good library should have it) and maybe you'll get some good ideas: The Practical Art of Suicide Assessment: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals and Substance Abuse Counselers by Shawn Christopher Shea. Psychiatric INterviewing: The Art of Understanding: A Practical Guide for psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, social workers, nurses, and other mental health professionals by Shawn Christopher Shea (one of the sections deals with suicides).

I am just curious, with all the Britney Spear thing going on... I am just wondering if there are any HIPPA violation? I thought when a pt is in a psych unit, it is suppose to be confidential. I mean how in the world are we getting all these news about Britney when she is in a psych unit that is suppose to keep confidentiality?

Good point. Didn't thing about that one. About our life expectancy is getting longer and longer... at least in the developed countries.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ttresponse.html Ok, here is a response from some of the critiques of the JAMA article. If anyone know of a response to that response, post. On another note, the editor of JAMA who published the article was fired. Look at http://www.csicop.org/articles/19990121-jama/

Thanks to Zenman, I've found the critique of the AMA article by the skeptic society. For your convience, here it is: http://www.rationalmagic.com/RMS/rms-jamacrit.html http://www.rationalmagic.com/RMS/rms-edit.html Probably should read this one also as it gives more context. The skeptic society is not exactly pro-TT, they do have a few articles that are anti-TT and here they are: http://www.rationalmagic.com/RMS/rms-tt1.htm They are fairly harsh about TT, calling is psuedo-science. So if you don't like these kind of labeling, skip this article. http://www.rationalmagic.com/RMS/rms-jama.htm Short disclaimer from the skeptic society

What!!!!!! You are working for me! I ain't paying you a dime! :) Thanks for the ref.

I think it is relatively new. If your professor is a Wholistic nurse, you might get extra point :). The energy concept in the context of the alter energy diagnosis is an old concept repackaged. The concept has different names depending on different cultures like "ki", "chi", ... etc. It is an emotional subject as you can see. A somewhat neutral description of it are: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/backgrounds/energymed.htm Do a search on "therapeutic touch" on the web page. If you scan through this thread, there are links to both sides (try the earlier posts toward the beginning of this thread).

Have no idea. But from the roots of thw word, it might mean how the relationship between the biochemistry of our brain and our psychology affect our immune system. Just a guess. Sort of this "mind-body" thing and how it affects our immune system. There is an Eatern approach to it but you can approach it without an Eastern philosophy also.

If alll the stuff we talked about in this thread turned out to be 100% rubbish... well... those of us who think we are enlightened will eat humble pie and you just save yourself tons of time and energy. I don't think your involvement in this thread is a waste of time. Actually I don't any of us who are involve in this thread is a waste of time regardless of what positions we take. The reason is that we probably will come into contact with TT and other "postmodern" nursing practices directly eventually if we have not already. When we make contact, at least we have a head start in terms of the different positions. I think nurses on both side of this issue all want to treat our patiens the way you said it.

Some probably will do lots of harm and some will do lots of good. Let's hope it washes out even or maybe even a bit toward the positive.

to save me some time, can you give me the actual reference that jama admits that this particular study is a mistake? another observation, what about the tt practioners who agreed to participate in this studies? they need some retraiing then? i mean if they understand krieger's tt (or are they from some other school of tt?), should they not agree to participate in the first place? also again so save me time, what are the jama's peer review process and how do they violate it? a few good examples will do. i personally find the article informative, maybe you should finish the whole thing. what about infectious diseases? true, we have superbug and stuff like that now. but if we compare the effectiveness of western medicine to other medical modality, which one save the most lives? as for chronic conditions, which one? i can think of serious mental illness like schizophrenia, that every medical modality failed if you look at it objectively. western medicine at least for many people with schizophrenia enable them to be stable enough that we can bring in the psyco-social part of treatment to enable them to have a good life again. what about diabeties? western medicine fail miserably in this? well, if the "postmodern" nursing takes charge, we won't me part of western medicine. how about other healt care system? how many people do they kill? we probably won't be able to tell because they don't have an obsession like western medicine in documenting everything under the sun, especially one's own failure. let's see, if i remember in school when one take the physics series, you do learn about newtonian physics (even now). quantum physics you learn at the last quarter or so. newtonian physics even now has its application, it is not obsolete. as for the evergy stuff, what about light? current understanding (if i am correct), light can be understood as wave (energy) or as particle. which model of understanding depends on the situation, sometimes one model seemed to be better than the other. about the philosophy went out of vogue... that is interesting... so we are to adopt the philosophy of the month? the thing is does anyone really understand the molecular mechanisms that truly provide for life? if i take the view you are suggesting, then i would reject western medicine, i would reject chinese medicine, i would reject tt right off the bat, i would reject all ancient healing modality as none of them understand the molecular mechanisms that truly provide for life. i drive a car but i do not really understand how it works. the key here is that i know how to operate a car. the key here is that a physicians know how to use a cell phone. the key here is that a trained person knows how to interpret a mammogram. i am not sure about the "every" part of the statement. it is true that many cultures all over has it. for example, the judeo-christian culture don't have this. how about the ancient egytian culture, i don't think they have it (i may be wrong). how about the ancient greek culture, do they have it? maybe they have a finer tuned senses. or maybe they were told by a powerful spiritual beings (this is another view). let's see, there are different explanations of this (assuming it is true) depending on one's world's view. one possible explanation of this is that of a worldview that acknowledge there are different dimensions of reality. in this case, there is a spiritual dimensions where there are powerful spiritual beings (shamanism, christianity, judaism, isalm...). vodoo involve directly or indirectly invoking a powerfull spiritual beings to do the persons bidding - nothing to do with "energy" as we are talking about in this thread. since the health center test turned up negative, it is possible for the beings to muck with the tests to make it turned up negative (corrected messed up word). in shamanic literature, things like the ability to mess up our modern equipment is not unheard off. i personally have heard personal stories like this. like one case one of my teacher went to a ritual in malaysia and he took some pictures (he knows he is not suppose to) and the shaman there pointed at his camera. when he developed his films, only and only those pictures he took were wiped out, all other pictures were ok. the class i am taking now, the prof mentioned one guest speaker she does not bring to class anymore because the guest speaker was a bit harsh with the class (like she wiped out the recording of the one of the students whom she feel bugged). i also hear stories about how in the villages of china where the shaman kicked out all the christians during one of their rituals because the by the mere presense of the christians, they are interfereing with them. now if you laugh at the christian story i just mentioned, check your attitude. the next question is actually - what is energy compose of? another observation, western medicine is very very young comparing to other medical systems of the world which many are thousands of years old. how many people died as a results of these medical systems? it is true many people died under western medicine, but how many people did it also save?

Where do you work? What unit? I think I will try to apply where you work and at your unit. :)

Here is another thought. With herbs and stuff, the West has a tendency to figure out what is the active ingredient and turn it into a pill. Advantage is that it is convient (e.g. Chinese herbal medicine takes forever to cook quite often and it usually stink up the whole house). Disadvantage is cost and it is often way more potent than what is in the herb and so in some cases, it can be easier to OD. With meditation, which if you trace its history, they do have a religious route - whether it is Eastern meditation or Western meditation. Well, as usual, Western approach is to sort of figure out the "active" ingredients and repackaging it (by taking out all the religious stuff). For examples, you have the "Freeze Frame" techniqe and the Herbert Benson's "demystifying" meditation techniques. TT may be a form of the Western way of doing energy work without the religious/philosophical overtone. Or maybe someone later will research TT and figure out what is the "active" ingredient(s) and repackage it into a form that is totally unrecognizable from the original TT. There are studies that uses "sham" TT. But I don't think we have studies that uses the following "sham" TT - do as much as everything the alter energy nursing diagnosis require to do (e.g. establish therapeutic relations and so on) and instead of using hands to feel the energy of the patient, use a little geiger counter looking device and tell the patient this device is detecting potential alter energy in him/her. Then proceed to use a different geiger counter device to "balance" it. This has to be done by a non-TT nurse, preferably someone who is on the "fence" so to speak with regard to TT. Be interesting to see if it has any difference.

Probably more accurate to say one is uninform in faith healing. Also probably should watch out for binary or black/white thinking that we tends to get into. In reality, one could be totally uninform about faith healing, somewhat inform, inform, expert, and guru (or whatever labels one cares to use on a spectrum). How inform are we before we are allow to make a judgement of not accepting it without being accuse of being close minded or uninform? On a more practical note, it is impossible to be "informed" on all the different healing modelities (from totally ineffective to being very effective). We all have limited amount time and energy and we have to be selective in what we do learn and be inform about (and the depth of it). Take an example, what if someone come up to you and show you a pill right now that is claimed to cure ALL cancer? Now, given my knowlege of cancer treatment, do I just rejected right away without knowing anything about it. Or do I spend time trying figure out what is in the pill and try to find out what kind of studies have been done on the pill? If I choose the first option, I can be accuse of being close minded and uninform, but there is a high chance that I am right - the pill is no good and I have decided not to waste my limited time and energy on this. Now I probably will spend more time on it if a number of my patients believe this pill and started to stop their cancer treatments because now I need to explain to my patient what is known about this pill. I think the way the current set up of determining whether a biological healing/curing modality works or not is ok (it can be improved) in that one has to go through the scientific evidence base process in order to be accepted in the mainstream practice. Notice I am only focusing at the biological level and not other levels like the spiritual level or psycho-social level. From a very practical point of view again, there are zillion of healing/curing modalities and as a nurse, we use what has been proven through high quality evidence base researches. For those modalities that has not been proven, one's safest position is "I don't know" and it is not going to have priority over what is known to be effective. Another practical problem is how does one interact with people who grew up and believe another healing/curing modelity so that mainstream medicine and nursing can somehow work together without requiring major changes to the patient's worldview (which is not possible to do given the amount of time most nurses have; and even if it is possible, is it ethical)?

:rotfl::rotfl:

Good questions.

A price for SFCardiacRN? :):)

I mentioned this point before... why the Alter Energy Field nursing diagnosis only specify TT? Why so specific? As your quote indicates, there are other modalities.

Whether you are smarter depends on How many of the books you bought you actually read. How much of the material do you retain. How much of it do you understand. :):):):):):):):) Another related question is - are you wiser?

Maybe this thread title should be change too NANDA or something... Two of the classes I am taking now deals with shamanism (one is on death, dying and religion and the other is on the relationships between magic, science, and religion). Shamanism, for those who are not familiar with it, has many different names... probably the most commonly used is the "medicine man". Anyway, with shamanism, a big part of it deals with healing. It has a totally different world view. Across cultures, they are quite surprising consistent. Anyway, the world view involve a sick person is either dis-spiritied (someone who has lost his own guardian spirit or his/her soul; everyone is suppose to have some guardian spirit) or an illed person has extra harmful power in him/her. A shaman, who has at least a powerful guardian spirit and many helper spirits (which s/he aquires over time) will go down to the underworld to retrieve the lost guardian spirit or even soul if it is the first case. The shaman will "suck" out the extra harmful powers in the sick patient in the second case. Now, there are courses you can take now in the US to become a shaman. Since it does deal with healing a lot, what happened if there are enough nurses who learned it and guess what, it is in the nursing diagnosis. Do we have problems with it? Actually, shamanism sometimes is group under CAM. Here at least one nursing school who is teaching CAM as an optional class also brought in shamanism for a little bit as a workshop (see http://www.westminstercollege.edu/review/index.cfm?parent=1607&detail=2383&content=2384) So, are we going to see specific nursing diagnosis for shamanism also? Those of us who are well-read in different religions and different healing systems (and there are a few of us who are), what are our attitudes? Are we going to be open to everything? Are we going to be critical in our evaluation? Are we going to be selective (there are just way too many different systems out there ranging from down right quakery to something that are worth futher investigation and everything in between)?

Nor is it synoymous with wisdom, insights, understanding, compassion, kindness, ... etc. A related question is how does being well read and having lots of experience shape that person? Does it make the person become full of him/herself and s/he starts to look down on other people? Or does it make the person humble because s/he realize how much one does not know?

To get back to sort of the original topic of this thread, let's do a simple exercise. Let's look at the details of the nursing diagnoses for Alter Energy Filed and Spiritual Distress. The following is a link to the nursing diagnosis from a previous poster way back when: http://www.fadavis.com/resources/New%20and%20Revised%20Nursing%20DiagnosesApproved_at_the_2005-2006_NANDA.pdf I am reposting the link just for our convience (just click) and also just to make sure we are all looking at the same version (this may not be the most current one). The simple exercise involve two similar scenerio and basically state your thoughts on these given these two scenerio. Let's also assume there is such a thing as energy field and that TT is effective. The question here is how well or not well the Alter Energy Field is written. First scenerio is that toward the end of the shift, nurse TT diagnosed his/her patient with Alter Energy Field but did not have time to do any intervention. Now the next shift nurse, say nurse NT came onto the shift and saw this diagnosis. Furthermore, Nurse NT has no training in TT and not only that, Nurse NT do not believe there is such a thing as "energy field". What should s/he do? Second scenerio is somewhat similar. Again it is toward the end of the shift. Nurse S diagnosed his/her patient with Spiritual Distress but did not have time to do any intervention. Now the next shift nurse, say nurse A came on and saw this diagnosis. Furthermore, Nurse A is an atheist. What should s/he do? A related question - What are the similarities and differences between these two diagnosis if any?

Good question. The problem is that nursing is so varied as it can be outside the hospital too. Even in the hospital environment, it can be very varied. For example, compare ER nursing to Psych nursing. With ER nursing, my guess is that you will not have that many opportunites to deal with the spiritual side of things as you have with some areas like psych nursing. The spiritual side, I think you usually need time to have the opporutnity for the patient to bring it up. From what I read on this site, beside psych nursing, other nursing areas that have more time to get to know the patient and family are areas like hospice nursing or certain kind of oncology nursing or rehab nursing. When one has the time to know the patient, spiritual issues can pop up and nurses has a role in it if the nurse is going care for the whole person (put the chaplaincy number on speed dial:)).

As far as my understanding goes with spiritual distress, any nurse can detect it base on the nursing diagnosis description (it does not matter if you are an atheist). In terms of action, often on the floor (I would assume base on my limited observation), the chaplaincy service would be called. If you happened to have the time and you are of similar faith tradition, you may be able to do something. If not, the safest route is to call the chaplaincy or find out if the person needs to get connected back to his/her faith community and try to contact that faith community. It is a case in my opinion of knowing when to call in the specialist, whether the specialist be a doctor, a social worker, a therapist, a chaplian, a whomever. Another related example is the Eucharist (communion) for a person of the Catholic faith. For a number of Catholics, having communion at least weekly is very important. If they don't have it, they would go under "spiritual distress". So a priest would be call. A related personal example, one of my uncle was dying and just won't go. There is something that seemed to be holding him back but he can't communicate. My mother finally asked him does he want communion (he is Protestant) and there were a drop of tears flowed from his eyes. They gave him communion and a few hours later, he died. I would place my uncle's example as spiritual distress and a good nurse will be able to detect it (even though s/he is an atheist) and take appropriate action by again, calling in the right people to help.

Actually there are all those paranormal stuff in psychology which is suppose to be "science". Do ghosts belong to relm of science? Or do they belong to the relm of philosophies/cosmology/religions? Just becaue I don't believe your world view, am I "close" minded. Now I do think there should be respect between people who have different views (which I think most people would agree). How would you handle a nursing diagnosis like "spirtual distress" (I think tweety mentioned it)? Should that be in the nursing diagnosis? Is there a difference between a generic "spiritual distress" and something specific like the channeling example you gave? As I mentioned before, I do think there is a difference. But what are your thoughts?