Empowering Prophetic Physicians: Three Creative Calls for Medical Humanities
Marianne Florian, PhD, McGovern Medical School, Institute for Spirituality and Health, Mary Horton, and Nathan Carlin, PhD, McGovern Medical School
Panel Overview
How can medical schools today ensure that their students develop ethics and humanitarian values alongside technological and scientific skills? Historical events over the past century shifted the ethical footing of medical education in the United States from mostly Judeo-Christian missions and values to non-sectarian, principle-based bioethics. While bioethics principles scaffold ethical reasoning about medicine, they do not readily inspire creative, prophetic moral agency in practicing physicians. Within secular medical education, humanities and human values training has repeatedly figured as an eligible supplement to medical curricula.
This interdisciplinary panel examines three distinct calls for including humanities and human values in medical education: (1) the historical emergence of character development as a rationale for humanistic training in medical school, (2) a prophetic critique of medicine and medical training from the imagination of a pivotal physician-author, and (3) an argument for incorporating compassion training within medical humanities. These three appeals to humanities and human values share a prophetic sensitivity to the suffering of both patients and physicians. They also share a fervent, pragmatic concern to mitigate that suffering by augmenting medical curricula with intellectual resources that explicitly value human capacities, experiences, and creativity.
Presentation 1: Humanities, Ethics, and Professionalism in Secularized Medical Education’s Pursuit of Value
In the mid-twentieth century, transitions in the ethical leadership of U.S. medical education made room for the field of medical humanities to develop, at least partly, as an instrument in the service of technological, scientific medicine. This presentation traces institutional shifts in American medical education: humanities training was initially instrumentalized to mitigate technological dehumanization; later, the rationale shifted to instrumentalizing it for cultivating physicians’ moral character. This paper highlights secularization in medical education as a key triggering condition for the shift in rationale for humanistic training. As medical schools secularized and professionalized, various knowledge repertoires presented resources for the task - including human values and humanities, bioethics, and later, professionalism. What problems arise when medical education and medical students rely less on shared religious beliefs and practices? Why does this change precipitate an increase in curricular attention to humanities, ethics, and professionalism? This historical analysis provides essential context for understanding contemporary efforts to reintegrate spirituality, narrative, and meaning making into medical education and practice.
Presentation 2: A Prophetic Physician-Writer: Samuel Shem’s Imaginative Satire of Medical Training
This presentation interprets the novels of Samuel Shem, an influential physician-writer, through a framework anchored by scholarly perspectives on secularization and prophecy. The philosopher, Larry Shiner, observes that secularization often involves reconfiguring and transposing sacred things into secular spheres. In medical education, instances of this kind of transposition include sanctifying the things medical students use, the rituals they undergo, and even the prophets they heed. Prophets serve two distinct social functions, according to the Hebrew Bible scholar, Walter Brueggman: to morally critique the social status quo and to exhort people to disrupt it by describing alternative visions of the social world. Samuel Shem's influential Healing Quartet of novels focuses on the experiences of Roy Basch, a fictional character based on Shem himself. These works expose the cruelty of medical training and the dehumanization of patients in the eyes of medical professionals. Drawing on the panelist’s recently published monograph, The Secularization of Medicine (2025), this presentation argues that Shem’s fiction nurtures a critical consciousness alternative to the dominant medical culture. He achieves this through imaginative transposition of prophetic moral critique from overtly religious to secular literary idioms.
Presentation 3: The Vital Role of Compassion Training in Medical Humanities Curricula
Compassion training for medical students can play a vital role within the broader context of medical humanities and human values education. Humans share a basic, natural capacity for empathy and compassion, which can be extended and strengthened through training. From this perspective, compassion is a psychological capacity to recognize suffering, feel goodwill towards the sufferer, and become motivated to alleviate or prevent the causes of suffering. Medical schools can now look to evidence-based training programs to help future physicians respond more compassionately to suffering. Some of the most researched compassion training programs emphasize meditation practice and are inspired by the Dalai Lama’s vision for a “secular ethics” that does not depend on any single religious or philosophical teaching but instead is grounded in human values. This simplified conception of compassion is independent from emotional resonance with the sufferer’s uncomfortable feelings. If effective, compassion training could strengthen physicians’ ethical discernment while safeguarding their professional resilience and wellbeing, two key priorities of medical humanities.
How can medical schools today ensure that their students develop ethics and humanitarian values alongside technological and scientific skills? Historical events over the past century shifted the ethical footing of medical education in the United States from mostly Judeo-Christian missions and values to non-sectarian, principle-based bioethics. While bioethics principles scaffold ethical reasoning about medicine, they do not readily inspire creative, prophetic moral agency in practicing physicians. Within secular medical education, humanities and human values training has repeatedly figured as an eligible supplement to medical curricula.
This interdisciplinary panel examines three distinct calls for including humanities and human values in medical education: (1) the historical emergence of character development as a rationale for humanistic training in medical school, (2) a prophetic critique of medicine and medical training from the imagination of a pivotal physician-author, and (3) an argument for incorporating compassion training within medical humanities. These three appeals to humanities and human values share a prophetic sensitivity to the suffering of both patients and physicians. They also share a fervent, pragmatic concern to mitigate that suffering by augmenting medical curricula with intellectual resources that explicitly value human capacities, experiences, and creativity.
Presentation 1: Humanities, Ethics, and Professionalism in Secularized Medical Education’s Pursuit of Value
In the mid-twentieth century, transitions in the ethical leadership of U.S. medical education made room for the field of medical humanities to develop, at least partly, as an instrument in the service of technological, scientific medicine. This presentation traces institutional shifts in American medical education: humanities training was initially instrumentalized to mitigate technological dehumanization; later, the rationale shifted to instrumentalizing it for cultivating physicians’ moral character. This paper highlights secularization in medical education as a key triggering condition for the shift in rationale for humanistic training. As medical schools secularized and professionalized, various knowledge repertoires presented resources for the task - including human values and humanities, bioethics, and later, professionalism. What problems arise when medical education and medical students rely less on shared religious beliefs and practices? Why does this change precipitate an increase in curricular attention to humanities, ethics, and professionalism? This historical analysis provides essential context for understanding contemporary efforts to reintegrate spirituality, narrative, and meaning making into medical education and practice.
Presentation 2: A Prophetic Physician-Writer: Samuel Shem’s Imaginative Satire of Medical Training
This presentation interprets the novels of Samuel Shem, an influential physician-writer, through a framework anchored by scholarly perspectives on secularization and prophecy. The philosopher, Larry Shiner, observes that secularization often involves reconfiguring and transposing sacred things into secular spheres. In medical education, instances of this kind of transposition include sanctifying the things medical students use, the rituals they undergo, and even the prophets they heed. Prophets serve two distinct social functions, according to the Hebrew Bible scholar, Walter Brueggman: to morally critique the social status quo and to exhort people to disrupt it by describing alternative visions of the social world. Samuel Shem's influential Healing Quartet of novels focuses on the experiences of Roy Basch, a fictional character based on Shem himself. These works expose the cruelty of medical training and the dehumanization of patients in the eyes of medical professionals. Drawing on the panelist’s recently published monograph, The Secularization of Medicine (2025), this presentation argues that Shem’s fiction nurtures a critical consciousness alternative to the dominant medical culture. He achieves this through imaginative transposition of prophetic moral critique from overtly religious to secular literary idioms.
Presentation 3: The Vital Role of Compassion Training in Medical Humanities Curricula
Compassion training for medical students can play a vital role within the broader context of medical humanities and human values education. Humans share a basic, natural capacity for empathy and compassion, which can be extended and strengthened through training. From this perspective, compassion is a psychological capacity to recognize suffering, feel goodwill towards the sufferer, and become motivated to alleviate or prevent the causes of suffering. Medical schools can now look to evidence-based training programs to help future physicians respond more compassionately to suffering. Some of the most researched compassion training programs emphasize meditation practice and are inspired by the Dalai Lama’s vision for a “secular ethics” that does not depend on any single religious or philosophical teaching but instead is grounded in human values. This simplified conception of compassion is independent from emotional resonance with the sufferer’s uncomfortable feelings. If effective, compassion training could strengthen physicians’ ethical discernment while safeguarding their professional resilience and wellbeing, two key priorities of medical humanities.