Health and Healing

"It's a very exciting time in nursing," says Barbara Dossey at the very beginning of the dialogue. She's right, of course—for weeks now, mainstream news has been flooded with stories around America's latest foray into healthcare reform, and what is typically a fairly dry and boring policy debate has become something of a media sideshow. It is unfortunate that the national healthcare conversation has devolved so far into tabloid sensationalism, as the most important debates around human suffering, healing, and social conscience have taken a backseat to town hall riots, burning effigies of Congressmen, and images of Obama with a Hitler mustache.
 

This is exactly what makes this discussion so alluring. Barbara offers an inside view of some of the greatest opportunities and obstacles faced by a healthcare system that finds itself at a very real crossroad between the 20th and 21st century. Many people are unaware of the internal pressures that have been building within the healthcare system for years, often originating from a wide network of nurses who are passionately devoted to dramatically raising our standards of care. It is an often-cited (and often-overlooked) fact that nurses are responsible for nearly 80% of the healing in the healthcare system, and that some of our most radical developments in treatment have been pioneered by the full-hearted efforts of nurses and healers around the world.

Barbara Dossey's work is a stunning exemplar of Integral theory and practice being taken into the world in very practical and enriching ways. Her deep love, wisdom, and commitment to compassion and the relief of suffering is unmistakable. Her clarity, intelligence, and sophistication shine through like a thousand suns. Barbara is one of our most respected and beloved Integral pioneers, helping to pull Integral theory out of the clouds of abstraction and bring it right where it most belongs—in the bowels of human suffering, reflected in the hearts, minds, and souls of healers everywhere.