"In the Image" In the Clinic: Applying Genesis 1 To Modern Medicine
Jonathan Weinkle, MD, Medical Director, Physician Assistant Studies; Clinical Assistant Professor, Pediatrics and Family Medicine, Chatham University; University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Background: The Hippocratic tradition describes the moral obligation of a physician to a patient. The Jewish version of this tradition begins with Genesis 1:26-27, when God creates human beings in God’s own image. Therefore, human beings show love for God through their relations with other human beings. Deuteronomy 6:5 commands that one love God “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with every last measure of your being.” Leviticus 18:19 commands that we love our fellow humans “as ourselves” as well. Humans show their own divinity by “walking in God’s ways” through acts of lovingkindness (Tractate Sotah 14a). These include visiting the sick, healing illness, burying the dead, uplifting the fallen, and comforting the mourner – essential acts to the practice of medicine.
The Jewish relationship with God is a covenant, a partnership characterized by love. The covenant at Sinai is likened to a wedding ceremony, with the Torah as the marriage contract. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson teaches, “To love someone is to become vulnerable to his or her choices.” Rabbi Harold Schulweis labels the healing relationship as a covenant between “two persons, aware of each other’s humanity.” Schulweis characterizes this covenant as one with a “dialogue of trust” where doctor and patient “struggle in common against pain and disease.” Marcus Hertz, the German-Jewish physician who composed the Physician’s Prayer often misattributed to Moses Maimonides, asks God, “Make me worthy to look on all who suffer, and come to seek my advice, as human, without differentiating… In their trouble, show me only the human being…. For any weakness in my work may bring sickness and disease to a work of Your hands.”
This workshop will demonstrate that the tradition of Hertz and Schulweis is the foundation for a concrete, practical discipline of healing interactions which can be taught to and practiced by 21st century healers. The Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education has included ethical behavior, professionalism, and effective communication among its core competencies for resident physicians. Specific behaviors and language derive from the tradition which directly address these competencies. We can hone these behaviors through practice just as we would technical skills like tying surgical knots or medical knowledge like the causes of thromboembolic disease.
Workshop Format: • Chavruta method: participants are paired into study dyads, or chavruta. • Stage set with a brief lecture of a roughly five minutes • Dyads discuss a brief text and address specific questions • Dyads then: practice specific interpersonal skills; reflect on situations in which they have had difficulty treating a person as fully human; discuss areas for improvement; reframe the situation; practice new language and behavior so that it becomes more genuine and spontaneous • Workshop will rotate several times between brief frontal lecture, dyadic study, and reporting out to the group.
The Jewish relationship with God is a covenant, a partnership characterized by love. The covenant at Sinai is likened to a wedding ceremony, with the Torah as the marriage contract. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson teaches, “To love someone is to become vulnerable to his or her choices.” Rabbi Harold Schulweis labels the healing relationship as a covenant between “two persons, aware of each other’s humanity.” Schulweis characterizes this covenant as one with a “dialogue of trust” where doctor and patient “struggle in common against pain and disease.” Marcus Hertz, the German-Jewish physician who composed the Physician’s Prayer often misattributed to Moses Maimonides, asks God, “Make me worthy to look on all who suffer, and come to seek my advice, as human, without differentiating… In their trouble, show me only the human being…. For any weakness in my work may bring sickness and disease to a work of Your hands.”
This workshop will demonstrate that the tradition of Hertz and Schulweis is the foundation for a concrete, practical discipline of healing interactions which can be taught to and practiced by 21st century healers. The Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education has included ethical behavior, professionalism, and effective communication among its core competencies for resident physicians. Specific behaviors and language derive from the tradition which directly address these competencies. We can hone these behaviors through practice just as we would technical skills like tying surgical knots or medical knowledge like the causes of thromboembolic disease.
Workshop Format: • Chavruta method: participants are paired into study dyads, or chavruta. • Stage set with a brief lecture of a roughly five minutes • Dyads discuss a brief text and address specific questions • Dyads then: practice specific interpersonal skills; reflect on situations in which they have had difficulty treating a person as fully human; discuss areas for improvement; reframe the situation; practice new language and behavior so that it becomes more genuine and spontaneous • Workshop will rotate several times between brief frontal lecture, dyadic study, and reporting out to the group.