The leading theme of the monograph concerns the numerous ethical, legal and social dilemmas that health care professionals face on a daily basis. The authors invited to contribute have attempted to characterise the therapeutic and nursing difficulties in the interdisciplinary care of the dying and seriously ill patient, in improving their quality of life and to make it clear, as John Paul II emphasised, that "where there is a suffering person
- there must be a person who surrounds the suffering person with support...". In the following pages of the book, we wanted to discuss issues related to the period of dying, bereavement and bereavement, as well as to reflect on the place of education in medical care and to test the validity of the words of St Augustine "There is no other teacher like death" and Paulo Coelho - "Awareness of death stimulates life". We wanted to sensitise readers to the problems described in the words of Elizabeth Kübler Ross "you cannot help a single person unless you involve head, heart and soul. In my work with patients, I have learned that whether they are schizophrenic, mentally retarded or simply dying, that their lives have a purpose. Not only can they all learn from you, get help from you, but they can also become your teachers". We wanted to introduce the tasks of health care workers in combating discrimination, stigma, aggression and addiction, because, as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta claimed, "the greatest evil is lack of sensitivity and love of neighbour and appalling indifference to a neighbour living on the margins, affected by exploitation, moral corruption, poverty and illness". We hoped to create an opportunity to experience special feelings and reflections on life and passing, to show that death does not only affect those who are seriously ill, but also the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, those with genetic handicaps and those who are simply homeless and already treated as absent, marginalised during their lifetime, as if they were dead. Finally, we wanted to analyse the widely understood problems of multiculturalism in medicine, in the words of Clifford Geertz:
"strangeness begins not at the edge of the oceans, but at the boundary of the skin", to reflect on the perception of different cultures by other peoples, the vision of health, illness and death in different cultures, the cultural determinants in individual fields of medicine, the place of unconventional medicine in therapy, and ethical dilemmas in the care of patients from different cultures. We believe that all readers of the monograph, after reading the individual chapters, will be convinced of the truth of Prof. Andrzej Szczeklik's words: "In every profession there are essential situations that reveal its face. And so the essence of medicine is the encounter between the doctor and the patient. (...). It is necessary to listen to the sick person's story, remembering that for the storyteller it is a primary situation, and for the listener that one of these stories may become his own story, his illness".
Prof. dr hab. n. med. Elżbieta Krajewska-Kułak Dr. n. med. Cecylia R. Łukaszuk Dr. n. med. Jolanta Lewko Prof. dr hab. n. med. Wojciech Kułak
Available online:
https://www.umb.edu.pl/photo/pliki/Dziekanat- WNOZ/monographs/volume_11.1.pdf (it has as many as 1,664 pages!)
And as many as 11 volumes!