The Pastoral Clinic: A Comparative Analysis

My faith tradition informs my theology of pastoral care as that a pastor has an authority in the pastoral care relationship. The pastor’s image in my faith tradition is an advisor, director, and guide. In my faith tradition, the lay people like to have the pastoral care, when they make important decisions. Since my culture is the hierarchal and patriarch system, the lay people believes that pastors are better to know about God’s will. Therefore, the lay people are too much depending on the pastor’s advices, and taking pastor’s perspective, rather than choosing what they want. There is no space to listen their inner voice in the pastoral care in my faith tradition. My theology of pastoral care in my faith tradition was that what Jesus did is what we should do. Because of my traditional ideal of pastoral care, I thought pastors have to know everything and be better than others until becoming like Jesus. However, I realized that the theology can be dangerous to look down the lay people and non-Christians, and is not helpful for the pastors and the lay people as well. I think it is important to remember in my tradition that the head of the church is the only one, Jesus, and we are all the body of Christ. There is the better part in the body of Christ. We are all the same and we need each other.

When a fatal disease becomes known to a society but lacks explanation our instinct as humans is to jump to conclusions, whether they are logical or not. We bargain with our faith, we search for any evidence to support our conjectures, we deny the truth of the disease, and we place blame on each other. All of these desperate acts of justification are driven by fear—fear of the unknown. The combination of fear and ignorance that pushes people to make conclusions is readily notable in the AIDS epidemic of Haiti. Haitians reacted to AIDS in a similar manner as other cultures, but there are also differences that are specific to their community. Like many cultures, Haitians reasoned the occurrence of AIDS with explanations beyond the scope of medicine, with diseases that were known to them, or were instead in complete denial. The uniqueness of the occurrence of AIDS in Haiti was that there was no direct cause that could be addressed. Thus, while under significant scrutiny as the origin of AIDS, Haitians reacted to the epidemic by blaming the existence of AIDS on poor socioeconomic status, on sorcery, and on other people or countries.

In The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community, Catherine Allen describes several rituals. As an outsider, while reading and learning about the rituals one thing was quite obvious, community reciprocity is the driving organizing dynamic for Andean culture. Furthermore, it is evident that Andean’s are drawn as a group into a shared communion with the Earth, with the Sacred Places, and with the ancestral dead. Carnival Time is an example of a shared communion or common focus that depicts the descent, locality, religion, and political factionalism that define this indigenous group of people.

In this essay the writer will discuss the colonisation of Australia, and the effects that dispossession had on indigenous communities. It will define health, comparing the difference between indigenous and non- indigenous health. It will point out the benefits and criticism of the Biomedical and sociological models of health, and state why it is important in healthcare to be culturally competent with Transcultural theory. The case study of Rodney will be analyzed to distinguish which models of health were applied to Rodney’s care, and if transcultural theory was present when health care workers were dealing with Rodney’s treatment plan.

The non-fictional novel The Addict offers a current perspective through the author’s eyes, Michael Stein, into the trials and tribulations that one has to go through when being an opiate addict. The processes that addicts go through becomes instantly examinable, offering insight into how individuals become addicted and what they go through while trying to become rehabilitated. Lucy Fields is the main patient described by Michael Stein in this book. Lucy is addicted to Vicodin and has been addicted for a number of years. Despite many social stigmas associated around addicts, becoming addicted to anything does not happen in a short amount of time. The context in which a person is living, their socioeconomic status, their social support and perceived social support are all factors in becoming addicted or rehabilitated. Throughout the book Michael Stein speaks about multiple patients and refers to buprenorphine as the primary prescribed drug for opiate users, he also refers to methadone treatment. The effectiveness of buprenorphine was shown through the book and how it is, with the help of adequate social and medical support, a viable option with regards to treating opiate addiction.

The pressing cancer epidemic in the heart of Botswana has signified the necessity for adequate biomedical technologies and personnel within African hospitals. The Princess Marina Hospital in Botswana is notorious for the medical contributions of Dr. P, a German oncologist, and its indoctrination of the Batswana notion of universal health care. As the statistic for cancer diagnosis ceases to decrease, the PMH staff has come to acknowledge their limited access to resources and their deficit of staff members. The implications of the cancer epidemic suggest that the biosocial conditions of developing nations can be attributed to their poor economic status, along with adverse political affairs such as corruption in the government.

HIV is the virus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly known as AIDS. HIV/AIDS has become one of the most destructive global pandemics in history. In 1990, the World Health Organization estimated that over one million people were living with AIDS, and in less than ten years, HIV had exploded worldwide (Perlin & Cohen). Johanna Tayloe Crane, a medical anthropologist, dedicated her career to studying the way political and economic inequalities influence how HIV/AIDS is researched and treated for in Africa. Crane complied over ten years of ethnographic research to study a HIV research partnership between a US university and Ugandan universities and clinics. Her book, Scrambling for Africa: AIDS, Expertise, and the Rise of American Global Health Science, unpacks both the American and Ugandan researcher’s and clinicians’ perspectives about the research partnership and critiques the U.S. response to the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Her findings reveal the paradox of health institutions and their global health research partnerships benefit from the inequalities they are trying to readdress. These global, economic, and scientific inequalities have allowed Global Health Science research partnerships to establish their own authority over Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.

First were legal issues associated with his intended deep participant observation method that included actually illegally crossing the border with the Triqui people. In relation to this, was his inability to help the Triqui in ways that his positionality might otherwise afford him because once again of the legal ramifications involved. He also had to be carefull attention to where he received funding from, since accepting money from federal sources might compromise the safety and well-being of the very people he is studying. Ultimately Holmes grappled the most with the question of is it worth it? Public Anthropology’s stance is to engage in social and audiences beyond self-imposed disciplinary boundaries. Homes does this by engaging in a social issue of the time and writes his book in such a way that people from outside the medical field and even outside the anthropological field can understand it. Public Anthropology also seeks to “start conversations among concerned parties.” Holmes does this through his deep participant observations and heavy focus on the experience of the actual people the ethnographer studies. Public Anthropology starts these conversations because they “can lead...to significant change.” In the last chapter Holmes calls for the attention of medical practitioners, policy makers, employers, and anthropologists to pay attention so that

There are an estimated 1 million crack users in Brazil, the largest number in the world. Cracolândia is symbolic of the country's drug epidemic (New Vice 1) and is time to put an end to this place. Cracolandia is a trap for this people who don’t have where to go, so they end up trying to find relief and confortable of life using the drug. However is very easy for us to look from outside only. People tend to close their eyes and think that Cracolandia don’t exist, but it does and it needs a solution. The biggest problem is that when you are inside is very hard to get out alone, and help there is something very rare.

Even though Botswana is considered under developed compared to United States and other countries, It 's impressive how the doctors and nurses managed to do whatever they can with the resources they had to treat their patients. Doctors and nurses pricked themselves with HIV infected needles and some had cancer, HIV, or other diseases, but still continued working (99). They were willing to risk themselves in order to help the people that are sick. This reminded me of the film, "Description for Survival", where a doctor and a nurse risked their safety in order to help the people with MDR tuberculosis. The doctor smuggled medications from the US to Peru in order to help the people and the nurse who visited patients ' house refused to wear a mask because it sets a "boundary" between her and the patient. While the rest of the community, even their own family leaves them when they

Conducting ethnographic field work places the anthropologist in the position of a student in the environment/culture they are studying. Emerging one’s self into the culture of something such as: prostitution or drug dealing causes potential risks not only to the anthologist but the people they interact with as well. For this paper, I will imagine myself conducting the same crack cocaine users and dealers study as anthropologist Bourgois, I will analyze the issues and personal conflicts I would encounter in the field work. I will also apply several experiences faced by anthropologist Bourgois and Sterk in relation to my own.

The writer would hope the counselor whether Pastoral or Clinical is honest with the individual. A person can get a lie from anywhere. The reason for counseling is to help the person overcome what they are going through in their crisis. The Bible says in John 8:32, "And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." A lie will only keep the person in bondage.

Christ is the leader of the Church, Paul in Ephesians 1:22 said “God placed everything under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the Church” however, God entrusted the authority to lead to his servant whom he set them aside to lead the community. Pastor as a public Leadership is to lead community. A person who is called by God to lead public has a responsibility to be in the community, with the community and for the community. One of best questions raised in the class during public leadership discussion was “How we can be a community pastor rather than just a church pastor?” This really a kind of question we are to consider as pastor especially as rural congregation pastor. In most cases when pastor are called to

Drug traffickers acted as patrons within the favela. Evidence from the interviews confirms the picture sketched by Arias in the favela of Santa Ana and Vigario Geral (Arias, 2006). When interviewees were asked about what the traffickers did for the community, the first thing they all

Media coverage of Africa has exponentially increased in recent times, but the information is rarely completely accurate and objective. Initiatives to fund global health projects has resulted in the creation of genius advertising campaigns that appeal to the emotions and humanity of privileged citizens in first world countries. This campaign has also led to grave misconceptions about the true nature of the culture and lifestyle that Africans live. The first misconception being that every person on the whole continent has the same religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and environmental surroundings. A satirical article named “How to Write about Africa” draws attention to the exaggerated usage of the wild landscape, naked mothers, starving children, and white heroes who come in and save all of the dying babies in Africa (Wainaina, 1992). Anthropologists refer to this idea of portraying Africa in a certain light in media to elicit a desired public reaction as a “single story.” A majority of media articles in general only present a single story to appeal to their target audience, but articles about Africa in particular are notorious for painting the picture of a poverty stricken continent that needs to be saved and few people have enough knowledge about Africa to contest the media they see everyday. A recent articled named, “Mothers and babies at risk in Apostolic church birth camps, where modern healthcare seen as ‘heathen’” is an example of a piece of media that tells a