Stephen Pattison

This paper contributes to the literature on ethics in Participatory Research by looking at the Researcher-in-Residence model and its application within health services research in three East London boroughs. The Researcher-in-Residence is embedded in the organisation to enable knowledge mobilisation and knowledge coproduction. Whereas negotiation o...

If wonder is the beginning of seeking knowledge and wisdom, conversation is the means by which wonder is explored and adumbrated. In 1989, before the founding of BIAPT, when Adam and Eve were children, I advocated the notion of critical, appreciative conversation as way of understanding and engaging in Practical Theology in a paper entitled ‘Some s...

Background This paper contributes to the literature on ethics in participatory research by looking at the Researcher-in-Residence model and its application within health services research. Objectives This paper looks at one model of participatory research, the Researcher-in-Residence. The model places the researcher as a member of the delivery tea...

This innovative workbook enables students and those working in health and social care to deepen their understanding of the values that underpin their practice. Rich in practical exercises and downloadable resources that invite the reader to engage with their own values, it explores how values, though not often reflected on, define the quality of ca...

I actively avoid going to my GP. One who ‘should know better’, over the years I have developed an increasing aversion to visiting the hard-working souls charged with my primary care. At the heart of this, I think, is the feeling that my subjectivity is now redundant and disregarded. I go to the GP with a small number of problems, important to me,...

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of 'flourishing' that is relevant to health care provision, both in terms of the flourishing of the individual patient and carer, and in terms of the flourishing of the caring institution. It is argued that, unlike related concepts such as 'happiness', 'well-being' or 'quality of life', 'flourishing'...

Faces are all around us and fundamentally shape both everyday experience and our understanding of people. To lose face is to be alienated and experience shame, to be enfaced is to enjoy the fullness of life. In theology as in many other disciplines faces, as both physical phenomena and symbols, have not received the critical, appreciative attention...

This special issue of Health Care Analysis originated in an conference, held in Birmingham in 2014, and organised by the group Think about Health. We introduce the issue by briefly reviewing the understandings of the concept of 'flourishing', and introducing the contributory papers, before offering some reflections on the remaining issues that refl...

The delivery of care with compassion has been a priority for healthcare professionals for a number of years and is epitomised in the “6 c’s” of care. However, the findings of a number of recent reports have highlighted the importance of ensuring that patients consistently receive care with compassion. This article proposes a broader conceptualisati...

This article explores the need for a renewed and creative engagement with theology on the part of chaplains so as to articulate and assist the public work of chaplains in (mostly secular) institutions. Acknowledging the current performed public theology of chaplains and the dearth of formal theological activity, some of the possible inhibitors to e...

Religion is coming to have a new visibility and salience in British society in general and in the arenas of law and health care in particular. While religion has never ‘gone away’, it is becoming more controversial and publicly discussed as lawyers and health care providers attempt to grapple with its potential implications in practice. Unfortunate...

This paper raises some issues about understanding religion, religions and spirituality in health care to enable a more critical mutual engagement and dialogue to take place between health care institutions and religious communities and believers. Understanding religions and religious people is a complex, interesting matter. Taking into account the...

Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy provides a lens through which to explore critical questions relating to contemporary religion in public life, and the institutionalisation of Islam in particular. Providing a rich description of the personnel, practice, and politics of contemporary Muslim chaplaincy, the authors consider the extent to which Muslim ch...

This book discusses questions concerning what face is, how important face is in human life and relationships, and how we might understand face, both as a physical phenomenon and as a series of socially-inflected symbols and metaphors about the self and the body. Examining what face means in terms of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary human soc...

In this article the authors outline and critique two models of public theology in order to advance a new, more helpful, approach. The context is British but the intention is to draw lessons for public theology in the global west. The state of British public theology is briefly surveyed and found to be in some disarray. The most common models—charac...

In this paper, we reflect upon shame and humiliation as threats to personal and professional integrity and moral agency within contemporary health care. A personal narrative, written by a nurse about a particular shift in a British National Health Service Accident and Emergency Department, is provided as a case study. This is critically reflected a...

The paper offers an account of integrity as the capacity to deliberate and reflect usefully in the light of context, knowledge, experience, and information (that of self and others) on complex and conflicting factors bearing on action or potential action. Such an account of integrity seeks to encompass the moral complexity and conflict of the profe...

Spirituality is a highly contested concept. Within the nursing literature, there are a huge range and diversity of definitions, some of which appear coherent whereas others seem quite disparate and unconnected. This vagueness within the nursing literature has led some to suggest that spirituality is so diverse as to be meaningless. Are the critics...

This article aims to challenge and expand notions of health, health care and health promotion, particularly in relation to smoking, via a consideration of the autobiographical literary work of the English playwright, Simon Gray. Gray died in 2008, having written a series of reflective autobiographical books, The Smoking Diaries. Gray was a lifelong...

This paper advances some novel definitions and understandings of spir-ituality. Spirituality is characterized as the experience and process of engaging with and managing significant relations and attachments with a variety of objects, including material, immaterial, psychological, social, living, dead, conscious, unconscious, and transcendent objec...

In 2008 the United Kingdom Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) published the latest version of its code of conduct (The code: standards of conduct, performance and ethics for nurses and midwives). The new version marked a significant change of style in the Code compared with previous versions. There has been considerable controversy and the accrual...

Pastoral care was at the leading edge of practical theological development two decades ago. It seems now to have been relegated to the sidelines. This paper considers the apparent marginalization of pastoral care in a mission-led era and argues that many of the emphases and concerns of pastoral care will need to be re-discovered and reintegrated if...

Artefacts are the works of human hands and they profoundly shape humans physically, psychologically and socially. However, pastoral care and pastoral theology have mostly ignored the artifactual dimensions of human existence. This paper explores the significance of artefacts for humans, and the kinds of relationships they have with them. It is argu...

In the UK, many fundamentally important policy decisions that are likely to affect the relationship between citizens and care services are now made at the sublegislative level and without adequate ethical consideration and scrutiny. This is well exemplified in the proposed guidance on the disclosure of information on children. A recent consultation...

Justifying the existence, position, and relevance of academic humanities scholarship may be difficult in the face of chronic practical needs in health care. Such scholarship may seem parasitic on human activity and performance that directly contributes to human wellbeing and health care. Here, a possible and partial justification for the importance...

There can be little doubt that, like the Darwinian revolution in evolutionary thought, modern developments in and perceptions of genetics will have an impact upon a variety of intellectual disciplines in terms of issues, form and content. How are humanities disciplinhes to help themselves and others to re-image and understnad the cultural, social a...

  This article presents findings from an empirical study exploring student and teacher perspectives on positive learning experiences in practical theological education. Forty-five students and twenty teachers were interviewed in focus groups in four educational institutions delivering programs in practical theology. The findings indicated that stud...

This article is a reflective report on a symposium held in 2004 organised by Cardiff University and St Michael's College, Llandaff, and sponsored by the British and Irish Association for Practical Theology, which addressed problems and prospects in Theological Reflection. The article identifies the main themes and issues considered at the symposium...

This article aims to engender discussion about the nature and future of medical humanities. First, a normative personal vision of medical humanities as an inclusive movement is outlined. Some of the problems that may emerge if medical humanities conceives itself too narrowly are then discussed. The case of the rise of the medical ethics movement is...

The practice of public health has been criticized as being too involved with a narrow, managerial agenda focused on health care rather than the wider horizons of public good. Public accountability is central to the practice of public health, but is not mentioned in current definitions. We offer a new definition that recognizes the centrality of the...

The practice of public health involves the application of evidence to improving population health, and should be accountable to the public. Accountability to the public can be considered either at the individual doctor-patient interface or through population-level policy making. The public, at both patient and population levels, should join the pro...

This article provides an account of part of the preliminary activity undertaken in connection within a project entitled, Theological Reflection for the Real World. Using a loose, reflective empirical methodology, the authors review the reactions and responses of a small group of recently ordained clergy in the Church of England engaged in initial m...

A growing body of research suggests that religion and spirituality can have a positive effect on mental and physical health. Like any other powerful belief system, they also have potential for harm. Further research is needed if they are to be understood and therapeutically incorporated into healthcare.

A discussion is offered of the recent work of John McLeod, which explores the notion of therapy as a social process. Points of similarity between McLeod's approach and notions of pastoral care are noted, such as an awareness of the relational nature of human well-being, the significance of narrative in therapeutic practice and the liminal role of c...

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Competing interests: None declared Authors: Thomas Heller is a general practitioner in Sheffield and senior lecturer at the School of Health and Social Welfare, Open University, Milton Keynes. Richard Heller is professor of public health at the University of Manchester. Stephen Pattison is professor and head of the Department of Religious and Theo...

This article provides a theoretical critique from a particular ‘ideal type’ ethical perspective of professional codes in general and the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting (UKCC) Code of professional conduct (reprinted on pp. 77-78) in particular. Having outlined a specific ‘ideal type’ of what ethically infor...

In this book, first published in 2000, Stephen Pattison considers the nature of shame as it is discussed in the diverse discourses of literature, psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history and sociology and concludes that 'shame' is not a single unitary phenomenon, but rather a set of separable but related understandings in different discourse...

Many NHS staff feel that they are unable to put their values into action because of the constraints on the service. They want a working environment where trust is possible and mistakes can be made without retribution. The reality is often bullying and attempts at innovation being met with reproach.

This paper attempts a partial, critical look at the construction and use of case studies in ethics education. It argues that the authors and users of case studies are often insufficiently aware of the literary nature of these artefacts: this may lead to some confusion between fiction and reality. Issues of the nature of the genre, the fictional, st...