The need for caring has always been part of the human condition. It consists of a wide range of responses to our vulnerabilities - compassion, comfort, empathy, sympathy, kindness, tenderness, listening, support, and being there. Whether provided by families, friends, communities, or health professionals, caring helps us to bear pain, suffering and disability, and to regain our physical, psychological and social functioning. Yet, in recent decades, changes in the organization, financing and delivery of health care, the education of health professionals and the nature of family and community life have eroded our capacities to be caring. In this work, Leighton E. Cluff, MD, and Robert H. Binstock, PhD, bring together experts to address the importance of caring, the reasons that it has eroded, and measures that can strengthen caring as provided by health professionals, families, communities, and society. The first section of the book reviews the elements of caring and the populations in need of it. The second section portrays the historical changes in medical practice and education that have undermined caring, and the constraints on caring in institutional settings, in homes and other community-based settings, and on caring provided by voluntary organizations. It also delineates the challenges to be met if the art of caring is to be improved in contemporary society. The final section puts forward a model for appraising the success of caring, as well as an analysis of the ways in which the United States is and is not a caring society with respect to the health of its people. The book should be of interest to health care professionals, families, policy makers and researchers in health policy, gerontology, medical sociology and biomedical ethics. It could also serve as a primary or secondary text in schools of medicine, nursing, public health, allied health professions, and social work.
