Compassion as a Compass for Medicine: The Role of Religious Understanding of Human Morality
Rabee Toumi, M.D., M.Div., Th.M., Ph.D.(c), Doctoral Student, Duquesne University
In a time when scientific medicine has made great strides toward healing and preventing many diseases, health disparities around the world still persist. To globally improve the human health condition, healthcare workers should revitalize the core value of medicine, which is compassion. This paper will argue that various religious traditions, regardless of their differences, are able to help shifting medicine’s priorities to embrace compassion not only at the personal encounter but also at the medical education and policy levels around the world.
The argument will build on the religious anthropological understanding of death as inevitable. Human mortality is argued to be the starting point of many religious traditions to give positive meaning to life (regardless of the metaphysics of death, sin, deity, and after-life). Therefore, religions, at the practical level, do not consider death as an enemy on its own because it is existentially inevitable and no human tool is available (or even possible) to defeat mortality. The faithful, as a result, are encouraged to pursue healthy lifestyle and healing when available as a means to live their faith and build their relationship with God and neighbors.
However, through a brief survey of medical education and the prevalent mindset in medical practice and general culture, it will be explained how medicine for a long time has considered death the ultimate enemy to fight relentlessly.
Therefore, to revitalize compassion as central to medical practice and policy making in regards to health at a global level, religious traditions are central to highlight the inevitable human mortality as a compass for medical education, practice, and policy making. The paper will advocate the following changes in medical education at various levels: effectively addressing the experience of anatomy lab and handling cadavers, active involvement in caring for the suffering and dying patients and their families during practical training, and encouraging physicians to educate the public on the inevitability of death. Moreover, by re-shifting the priority of medicine away from defeating death, healthcare providers and policy makers, under the auspice of physicians, will be able to advance population health by investing more in preventative medicine for all. This will be in the best interest of all religious communities, regardless of their differences and where they exist, through improving the health of everyone in the community and directing the communities resources (human-power and financial resources) toward making sustainable changes in their neighbors’ lives, close and far away.
In a time when scientific medicine has made great strides toward healing and preventing many diseases, health disparities around the world still persist. To globally improve the human health condition, healthcare workers should revitalize the core value of medicine, which is compassion. This paper will argue that various religious traditions, regardless of their differences, are able to help shifting medicine’s priorities to embrace compassion not only at the personal encounter but also at the medical education and policy levels around the world.
The argument will build on the religious anthropological understanding of death as inevitable. Human mortality is argued to be the starting point of many religious traditions to give positive meaning to life (regardless of the metaphysics of death, sin, deity, and after-life). Therefore, religions, at the practical level, do not consider death as an enemy on its own because it is existentially inevitable and no human tool is available (or even possible) to defeat mortality. The faithful, as a result, are encouraged to pursue healthy lifestyle and healing when available as a means to live their faith and build their relationship with God and neighbors.
However, through a brief survey of medical education and the prevalent mindset in medical practice and general culture, it will be explained how medicine for a long time has considered death the ultimate enemy to fight relentlessly.
Therefore, to revitalize compassion as central to medical practice and policy making in regards to health at a global level, religious traditions are central to highlight the inevitable human mortality as a compass for medical education, practice, and policy making. The paper will advocate the following changes in medical education at various levels: effectively addressing the experience of anatomy lab and handling cadavers, active involvement in caring for the suffering and dying patients and their families during practical training, and encouraging physicians to educate the public on the inevitability of death. Moreover, by re-shifting the priority of medicine away from defeating death, healthcare providers and policy makers, under the auspice of physicians, will be able to advance population health by investing more in preventative medicine for all. This will be in the best interest of all religious communities, regardless of their differences and where they exist, through improving the health of everyone in the community and directing the communities resources (human-power and financial resources) toward making sustainable changes in their neighbors’ lives, close and far away.