The (New) Language of Medicine

Doctors are taught how to cure disease. With the right medicines or cutting-edge procedures, we can alleviate a patient’s suffering. But after four years of medical school, this view is obviously incomplete. Medicine is far too complex. Every day it collides with politics; it conflicts with our faith; it challenges us; it fails us. While treatments are often necessary, sometimes a touch, a hand, or a few words are equally important.

We are taught to cure, but as humans, we must also care.

As Fellows at Center for Public Leadership (CPL), Sophia McKinley, Eric Seymour, and I have been inspired to drive social change in medicine. As doctors-in-training who recently pursued Master's Degrees at Harvard University, we each sought to better understand how our social environment affects the practice of medicine -- how to better "care." Through study, practice, and leadership development as Zuckerman and Dubin Fellows, we nurtured our passion for improving medicine at intersection of education, community health, politics, and business.

Medical training is rigorous and mentally, physically, and emotionally demanding. Though initially drawn to this field out of compassion and desire to serve, many medical students and resident physicians suffer from ethical erosion, burn-out, and loss of patient-centeredness. Thus, next spring we will launch an online platform dedicated to fighting this erosion of core values through "humanism."

Humanism in medicine is by no means a new concept. It “describes relationships between physicians and their patients that are respectful and compassionate. It is reflected in attitudes and behaviors that are sensitive to the values, autonomy, cultural and ethnic backgrounds of others.” Humanism is integrity, compassion, and empathy in every encounter, all of which align with the values and atmosphere we cultivated together at CPL.

With support from CPL, we are creating online space where providers, students, and patients alike can reflect and share their stories with one another. This online forum will lie at the intersection of academic journal and personal blog, beginning with a weekly column, and growing to accept submissions from physicians, residents, students, other providers, and patients.

We write to witness, reflect, record, and share this journey. We write as a way to name and consequently accept or reject the cultural waters in which we swim. We write to reveal the hidden curriculum, good or bad, of our training. Along the way, we aim to provide multiple viewpoints in a respectful yet rigorous discussion on a range of interdisciplinary topics such as individual patient care, the education of new physicians, health policy, and population health.

Each of us has met other providers and patients who also see writing and humanism as a means of alleviating suffering. This space will bring all these individuals together in one place. It is our hope that this endeavor will become a special place for medicine, writing, and humanism to intertwine.

Please join us in this movement.

Sincerely,
Robert A. Swendiman
University of North Carolina School of Medicine | Class of 2014
Harvard Kennedy School of Government | Class of 2014
Dubin Fellow for Emerging Leaders


References

• The Arnold P. Gold Foundation: What is Humanism in Medicine? Accessible at: http://www.humanism-in-medicine.org/index.php/aboutus/what_is_humanism_in_medicine