What is it about?
Persons who receive care for acute and chronic illnesses attempt to understand or redefine themselves in relation to illness in the course of treatment. In this process they work (often unwittingly) with metaphysical assumptions about the nature or existence of disease, of themselves as human beings, and of their personal capacities. When people think of disease as a thing with independent existence, something other than themselves, they “substantialize” the disease. The paper explores the various ways in which substantialization of disease impacts patients’ self-identity, capacity of action, and relation with treatment and doctors, thus influencing the course of the disease, the process of healing, and patients' self-care.
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Why is it important?
Identifying and addressing people’s metaphysical assumptions about their illness improves the quality of health care, and patients’ experiences of interacting with health professionals, treatment, and their condition of being ill. Learning how to identify substantialization of disease in patients and to prevent its negative effects is to meet a dimension of people’s health needs which is currently ignored, and influences the treatment process and outcome.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Patients' substantialization of disease, the hybrid symptom andmetaphysical care, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, October 2014, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/jep.12250.
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Resources
Therapeutic potential in ‘metaphysical care’
Commentary on the ways in which my concept of "substantialization of disease" can be useful in clinical practice and can be further developed for the use of clinicians.
Patients' ‘thingification’, unexplained symptoms and response-ability in the clinical context
Commentary on my concepts of “substantialization of disease” and “metaphysical care”, pointing out their importance and their challenges in the context of biomedical care, and the possibilities to be observed and worked with in a person-centred model of care.
Theory, experience and practice
Editorial including considerations of the value and usefulness of my concept of "metaphysical care", placed in the context of current efforts to build a person-centred ontology and epistemology of medical care.
Diseases, patients and the epistemology of practice
Editorial mentioning the concepts I introduce – “substantialization of disease” and “metaphysical care” – and appreciating the place they can have within current views of disease and health, and the role that metaphysics can have at the bedside.
Contributors
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