Regardless of the provision that hope is an intangible factor, it constitutes the factors to be considered in healing. The intangible aspect does not make hope less valuable than other factors considered in the healing process. Its value emanates from the idea that a significant number of people perceive as well as experience hope as a positive force. In this respect, hope is a concept that motivates individuals to get through difficult periods and to support each other whenever they are undergoing trying times. Hope plays a significant role that involves influencing individuals to keep moving forward regardless of the situation they might be facing. This basis forms the idea that hope plays a role in the healing process.
People have taken note of accounts of other people’s phenomenology of suffering through observing them or through the description of their experiences. This indicates that the core concept of suffering could be observed from the point of view that the individual might be feeling alienated, meaningless, and might have lost their personal identities. The onset of an illness triggers suffering when an individual interprets the symptoms as a threat to their selfhood. The existential crisis might occur regardless of whether the illness is life threatening or otherwise. Much of the patient’s suffering is a derivative of the patient’s doubt regarding whether the condition is curable or whether it can be integrated in his or her self-identified narrative.
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From the considered situation, a valid deliberation for improving the healing process would be the reliance on hope, which acts as an antidote for suffering. There is a possibility of arguing that being candor with a patient is unethical, particularly for the terminally ill patients, presumably because it has the potential of leading to a disastrous result. Such an argument leads to the presumption that it would be essential for physicians to avoid destroying the patient’s hope since it assists in ensuring the promotion of the patient’s self-determination. For this reason, hope in healing transmutes into the expectation of realistic objectives.
On the other hand, one could argue that hope is an intriguing concept when applied to the healthcare process. Robert Richardson (2000) indicates that hope and life are two concepts that cannot be separated. In this case, it would be proper to indicate that life acts as the breeding ground for hope. Richardson focuses on the idea that hope requires a specific degree of life energy, which dwindles with the worsening of an individual’s chronic illness (Richardson, 2000). From this basis, the concept of hope and its relation to the healing process requires life energy, which means that in the absence of this energy, hope becomes trivial. Whether an individual might be dealing with a chronic illness, or challenges that would hinder the effectiveness of the healing process, denying that there is hope requires an equal denial of the role of despair.
No living person is not tested by adversity at one or more points in their lives. The manner in which a person responds to the adversity experienced significantly determines the outcome. In this light, being hopeful can make all the difference required to overcome the adversity since individuals do not always have the power to predict or control some of the external circumstances or the results they achieve. Instead, the only power that people have is to control their reactions towards their experiences as brought forth by the external circumstances they face. In medical practice, it would be interesting to see a patient that is hopeful. As echoed by Feudtner (2005), when making medical decisions, it would be advisable for physicians to manage the hope of their patients skillfully, which is essential for facilitating the transformation about the manner in which patients are thinking or feeling about their situation or condition.
It would be essential to consider the meaning of healing in order to determine the role that hope plays in this process. Healing does not only involve the process by which physicians get rid of a patient’s ailment. Instead, healing is a holistic provision that involves several processes. Feudtner (2005) relies on Dossey’s definition to indicate that healing is the process that involves the physical, spiritual, mental, as well as the social processes involved in an individual’s recovery from an illness, his or her repair, renewal, and the transformation needed to increase his or her wholeness. An individual might refer to this definition to comment on the idea that the foundation of the healing process is the belief in a person’s improvement or well-being, which is a provision that characterizes hope.
Feudtner’s definition of healing points towards the idea that a several factors should be considered when undertaking the healing process. These factors are dependent of internal corrective forces that fend of different threats against the viability of the cells in a person’s body (Nuland, 2001). In his paper, Nuland (2001) introduces the concept of placebo effect. This concept could be understood as the beneficial effect that a patient derives from the belief in the treatment administered. The beneficial effect cannot be attributed to the properties of the drug that a patient might have used to take care of his or her condition, but the thought that the drug has cured his or her condition.
This concept has been the norm in the history of medicine (Nuland, 2001), which calls for the need for physicians to learn about the way they could deal with a patient. As identified earlier, the opportunity to learn about the psychological provisions of a patient will enable the physicians to devise ways through which they could facilitate the transformation of a patient’s feeling regarding his or her situation (Feudtner, 2005). This situation confirms that hope is a powerful tool that can influence the life of an individual. In this regard, hope exists everywhere, and if mobilized in an effective manner, it could be considered as precious. Hope can be perilous if left unattended, which means that physicians also play a significant role in instilling hope to their patients.
Hope also plays a vital role in the hope-wellness cycle. Chloe Eustache, Emily Jibb, and Mary Grossman (2014) carried out an exploratory study on the manner in which hope correlates with healing in patients that were living with non-small cell lung cancer. In their evaluation, one of the provisions that the authors were focusing on included the strengthening of the link between the concept of hope and wellness. One of their derived themes based on this concept is the belief that patients had in relation to the hope-wellness cycle (Eustache, Jibb, & Grossman, 2014). This result confirms that hope plays a significant role in the healing process of a patient. In this regard, the authors theorize that high hope levels were significantly intertwined with the concept of wellness, consequently indicating that hope promotes the development of a positive mind frame that supports the healing process.
Eustache, Jibb, and Grossman (2014) emphasize on the idea that hope enables patients to pull themselves from their emotional mess, which might hinder them from responding positively to some of the treatment initiatives administered by physicians. Suffering is one of the intrinsic parts of the experiences of human beings. This feeling is heightened when an individual is ill, and is particularly distressing when the patient has a chronic condition. This provision calls for the need for physicians and nurses to humanize their patient’s medical information, which is essential for providing their patients with the hope needed to fight for wellness.
For this reason, the healthcare providers could be considered as healers since they approach the care process holistically. Apart from treating the patients and providing them with the care they need, they should manage the hope of their patients in an effective manner to ensure that they do not give up on their will to live. A hopeless individual is isolated and cut off from the society, which is a situation that might influence the individual to become fixated into a past or future that is not real.
It would be essential to integrate healing in the provision of care, particularly when dealing with individuals with chronic illnesses. For instance, the integration of healing in the provision of care to a patient with cancer is not only beneficial to the patient, but can also assist in ensuring that the diagnosis becomes less distressing. Such a disposition will consequently ensure that the physicians providing care would be satisfied with their work (Eustache, Jibb, & Grossman, 2014). On this same note, it would be possible to compare such a view with James Morgan’s position on the role of hope in promoting imagination. Morgan (1994) projects that in the absence of hope; the imagination of an individual is paralyzed. This argument calls for the need to revisit the concept of hope as it relates with the hope-wellness cycle. Hopeless individuals cannot be able to use their mental abilities due to fear.
The concept of hope and its role in healing could also be looked at from a religious point of view. Religious individuals are more likely to depend on the higher being that they worship for healing. Richardson (2000) refers to the theologian James Cone to indicate that an individual without hope dies. Based on this argument, an individual can indicate that the only hope that he or she has is based on theological arguments. For instance, a Christian is likely to depend on God to heal him or her. Regardless of the medical interventions provided by physicians to take care of such a patient’s illness, the hope that the believer has on God is the driving force that would encourage him or her to hold on to his or her life with the expectation of freedom from their illnesses. The theological element provides that hope does not only enhance the quality of life, but the quantity of life as well (Richardson, 2000). The belief in the supreme is one of the elements that spur conversations about the desires that individuals have in life.
In spite of the identified provisions, assessing the role of hope in healing could also be looked at from the end-of-life point of view. Feudtner (2005) questions the applicability of healing when considering end-of-life care. He confirms that healing is possible in end-of-life situations by ensuring the achievement of a holistic concealed objective regarding the health of the patient (Feudtner, 2005). An assessment of this affirmation could be looked at from point of view of ensuring the comfort that the patient is likely to receive from the care provided. The fundamental objective of end of life care is to ensure that the patient lives as well as possible, which is essential for ensuring that they die in a dignified manner. During end of life care, healthcare providers do not only provide medical support, but also legal and other elements needed for upholding the dignity of the patient.
A person could question why a patient in palliative care warrants healing since he or she might be having a terminal illness that cannot be cured. For instance, a person diagnosed with terminal cancer might not have a reason to be healed since he or she is bound to die. Even though such an argument is seemingly logical, the reasoning behind the concept of healing is presumably not applicable. In this case, healing is more than being set free from a particular illness. It would not be possible to cure an individual with terminal cancer, which means that the person arguing in such a manner confuses the concept of healing with curing. For a person to be healed, the objective of the healing process has to be achieved (Feudtner, 2005). For instance, in the case of an individual under palliative care, the objective is to ensure that the patient is comfortable and is treated with dignity as he or she is waiting to die. The hope that the patient will be having will be characterized by the idea that he or she would expect to die peacefully. For this reason, hope is also essential in the healing process of a patient in palliative care since he or she will expect to transform and increase his or her wholeness and coherence for the remaining period of life.
It would also be essential to factor in the concept of a patient’s mental well being when considering the role of hope in the healing process. According to Morgan (1994), patients that might be suffering from mental illnesses are not imaginative. In this regard, a mentally ill patient is characteristically confused. The confusion does not mean that the patient is not hopeful since hope is an intrinsic trait. However, it would be difficult to substantiate the claim that a mentally ill patient would still be hopeful of being healed. Morgan (2014) confirms this difficulty by indicating that a mentally ill individual is a hopeless individual since the person lives in confusion. This argument calls for the need to indicate that to the mentally ill individual, his or her hope could be likened to living in fantasy. From this basis, it is possible to point out that the concept of hope exists in a particular imaginative space that supports the concept of hope in itself.
To conclude, it would be essential to point out that hope is a powerful concept that influences individuals in different lifestyles in a significant manner. Hope exists in all the aspects of life, whether in philosophical, social, political, or religious spheres. For this reason, individuals hope to achieve a considerable number of things, depending on their will. However, external circumstances or events can either quash or nurture the hope that individuals have. From the literature review, it is possible to confirm that hope plays a significant role in healing. However, as identified earlier, the effective mobilization of robust hope is fundamental. On the contrary, when healthcare providers do not attend to and manage the hope of their patients in an appropriate manner, there is a possibility of driving this hope in perilous direction. For this reason, it would be appropriate to recommend that healthcare providers should focus on acquiring appropriate skills that they could use to nurture the hope of their patients, which is fundamental to ensuring that the patients embrace the healing process. Conversely, the effective management of the hope that patients and the caregivers have could also be enhanced through the development and application of test techniques needed for encouraging patients to be hopeful.
References
Eustache, C., Jibb, E., & Grossman, M. (2014). Exploring Hope and Healing in Patients Living with Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Oncology Nursing Forum , 41 (5), 497-508.
Feudtner, C. (2005). Hope and the Prospects of Healing at the End of Life. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine , 11 (supplement 1), s-23-s-30.
Morgan, J. (1994). Imagination as Healer of The Hopeless: Images of Hope Revisited. Religious Education , 89 (2), 294-303.
Nuland, S. (2001). The Uncertain Art: Mind, Body, and the Doctor. The American Scholar , 70 (3), 123-126.
Richardson, R. (2000). Where there is Hope, there is Life: Toward a Biology of Hope. Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Advancing Theory and Professional Practice Through Scholarly and Reflective Publications , 54 (1), 75-83.
