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Commentary
May 28, 2008

Introducing Spirituality in Medical Care: Transition From Hopelessness to Wholeness

Author Affiliations

Author Affiliation: Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, California.

JAMA. 2008;299(20):2440-2441. doi:10.1001/jama.299.20.2440

When cure eludes patients with devastating conditions, healing measures become of utmost importance to the patients and their families.1,2 In an integrative approach to care, healing and curing are introduced in parallel as soon as any diagnosis, especially a critical one, is made.3 In this model, healing addresses the human experience of illness and curing the organic aspects of disease. Because loss can be experienced even in the absence of death, bereavement is represented as a continual process from the outset and usually increases after death.3

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