Introduction
Professional presence is an analysis of our past, present and future. It is a construct of our knowledge, our influences, our self-awareness and practices. It comes down to how each of us understands what it means to be human and how to care for one another. This is always evolving based on new experiences and knowledge. Through looking over time at the view point of humans, to personality tests, to personal development and lastly looking at optimal healing environments this paper will construct my professional presence and look at ways to improve my ability to care for others.
A1. Models of health and healing: A comparison of 2 Eras
In Dr. Dossey’s “A Conversation About the Future of Medicine” he discusses his theory of the progress of health and healing. He looks at how medicine changed from the 1860s the 21st century based on how the individual was viewed. He shows how the individual progressed from being looked at as solely a physical being with physical ailments to more modern views where we treat the person has a whole including their emotions and “spirit” or “soul”. He broke this progression down into 3 parts which were called “Eras”.
An overview of the Era’s will show how medicine has progressed to look at the patient as whole not just a body with symptoms. Era I, also called “mechanical medicine”, began in the 1860s. In this era Dossey shows how patients were treated in a purely physical nature. He states that the, “prevailing view that health and illness are totally physical in nature, and thus all therapies should be physical ones, such as surgical procedures or drugs” (Dossey 1999). Thus the thought was if someone was having pain or other symptoms it was more related to something that was there that needed to be removed, sedated or altered. The patient’s ability to think or feels was, “essentially equated with the functioning of the