Abstract
Detailing the complexity of survivor/health professional interactions, Piwowarczyk highlights the need for health professionals to understand survivors’ pain or illness as multidimensional—including physical, psychological, social, and spiritual suffering—as well as to recognize the ways in which the behavior and norms of health-care professionals might unwittingly reproduce patients’ previous traumatic experiences. Piwowarczyk ultimately argues for health professionals to envision their roles not as experts with answers so much as “accompaniers” who can assist survivors with their healing and recovery. She also underscores the role of health professionals as advocates who, following the lead of survivors, can testify in specific situations, but who also can work institutionally to increase the legal and medical protections available to torture survivors.
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Notes
- 1.
Amnesty International , Annual Report 2006: The State of the World’s Human Rights (London: Amnesty International, 2006).
- 2.
H. M. Weinstein, L. Dansky, and V. Iacopino, “Torture and War Trauma Survivors in Primary Care Practice,” Western Journal of Medicine 165, no. 3 (1996): 112–18.
- 3.
Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network, www.phrusa.org
- 4.
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel , Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“Istanbul Protocol”), 2004, HR/P/PT/9/Rev.1, available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/4638aca62.html (accessed 3 November 2017).
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Piwowarczyk, L.A. (2018). The Role of Health Professionals in Torture Treatment. In: Moore, A., Swanson, E. (eds) Witnessing Torture. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74965-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74965-5_5
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