The Hippocratic Society: Critical Appraisal of Possibilities for Interfaith Collaboration
Farr Curlin, MD, Duke University, Durham, NC; Aasim Padela, MD, MSc, FACEP, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; Jonathan Weinkle, MD, FAAP, FACP, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA; Ethan Schimmoeller, MD, Memorial Family Medicine Residency, South Bend, IN
This panel will consider whether a new association, The Hippocratic Society, might facilitate collaboration between Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other medical practitioners to promote good medicine.
The Hippocratic Society’s mission is to form and sustain clinicians in the practice and pursuit of good medicine.
We believe:
Renewal starts at home.
Today’s medical education largely ignores the task of moral formation, and health care systems often treat clinicians as interchangeable “providers” whose character is largely beside the point. In contrast, we focus on cultivating virtues that characterize good medical practitioners.
Good medicine requires good judgment.
Today’s medical ethics often detaches from the question of what good medicine requires and asks us to set aside clinical judgment in service to patient autonomy and the expectations of third parties. In contrast, we seek to discern and do what good medicine requires, thereby fulfilling our healing profession.
Good medicine is its own reward.
Today’s corporatization of healthcare treats practitioners as interchangeable “providers” who are expected to “just do your job” according to expectations that often have little to do with healing. This has contributed to a crisis of medical morale. In contrast, we embrace medicine as a sacred profession, and we help medical practitioners to flourish in serving their patient’s genuine good.
The Society carries out its mission in two primary ways.
Our vision: The Hippocratic Society will offer a compelling alternative to the de-moralized status quo of contemporary medicine.
To realize this vision, the Society is working to develop a network that extends to all levels of the medical community. If we succeed, every academic medical center will have an active chapter of the Hippocratic Society offering a ladder of formation from the premedical period to the end of post-graduate training. A dense network of senior clinicians will serve as mentors to trainees, and a parallel network of clinician chapters will support practitioners across the United States and beyond. Through the hippsoc.org portal, participants will access resources that individuals and groups can use to study and grow, dialogue and discern. Members will work within their health care institutions and professional organizations to prioritize patient health, good clinical judgment, and conscientious practices.
The question apropos of the Conference on Medicine and Religion is whether this association can genuinely promote goals that are shared among Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other clinicians. The Hippocratic Society is not politically or religiously affiliated. It welcomes all who share our commitment to medicine as a healing profession. Importantly, the Society does not ask its members to set aside their moral, political, or religious commitments, and it recognizes that within a shared profession to heal, there is room for distinctive traditions of situating medicine within a well lived life and a well-ordered community.
Nor does the Society take positions on legal and policy issues or on contested bioethical questions, even as it recognizes that clinicians must do so in discerning what good medicine requires of them. To aid such discernment, we foster dialogue regarding important clinical topics. We seek to develop good clinical judgment and to practice conscientiously. We oppose policies that pressure practitioners to do otherwise, and we encourage participants to contend peaceably for good medicine in their own contexts.
Can this posture hold together a coalition of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other clinicians (including those with no religion) who share a commitment to fulfilling their healing profession? Can it do so without ignoring or minimizing real disagreements about what good medicine entails and without specifying further positions on controversial topics? This interfaith panel will consider these questions.
The panel includes four physicians with complementary expertise regarding the intersection of medicine, ethics, and religion; and with individual expertise regarding Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Two of the physicians are working to build out the Hippocratic Society, one in an academic medical center and one among premedical students at a prominent university.
The Hippocratic Society’s mission is to form and sustain clinicians in the practice and pursuit of good medicine.
We believe:
Renewal starts at home.
Today’s medical education largely ignores the task of moral formation, and health care systems often treat clinicians as interchangeable “providers” whose character is largely beside the point. In contrast, we focus on cultivating virtues that characterize good medical practitioners.
Good medicine requires good judgment.
Today’s medical ethics often detaches from the question of what good medicine requires and asks us to set aside clinical judgment in service to patient autonomy and the expectations of third parties. In contrast, we seek to discern and do what good medicine requires, thereby fulfilling our healing profession.
Good medicine is its own reward.
Today’s corporatization of healthcare treats practitioners as interchangeable “providers” who are expected to “just do your job” according to expectations that often have little to do with healing. This has contributed to a crisis of medical morale. In contrast, we embrace medicine as a sacred profession, and we help medical practitioners to flourish in serving their patient’s genuine good.
The Society carries out its mission in two primary ways.
- It promotes the moral and professional formation of its members. Through mutual study, dialogue, and practice, participants train their attention on exemplars of virtues such as courage, generosity, and sincerity, while they practice cultivating such virtues in themselves.
- It sponsors fair, serious, and open discourse about the most important questions facing medical practitioners in our time. Against the tendency in academia to ignore or suppress disagreement and dissent, the Hippocratic Society promotes public dialogue about difficult questions, confident that by reasoning together medical practitioners can discern better how to serve our patients and fulfill our profession.
Our vision: The Hippocratic Society will offer a compelling alternative to the de-moralized status quo of contemporary medicine.
To realize this vision, the Society is working to develop a network that extends to all levels of the medical community. If we succeed, every academic medical center will have an active chapter of the Hippocratic Society offering a ladder of formation from the premedical period to the end of post-graduate training. A dense network of senior clinicians will serve as mentors to trainees, and a parallel network of clinician chapters will support practitioners across the United States and beyond. Through the hippsoc.org portal, participants will access resources that individuals and groups can use to study and grow, dialogue and discern. Members will work within their health care institutions and professional organizations to prioritize patient health, good clinical judgment, and conscientious practices.
The question apropos of the Conference on Medicine and Religion is whether this association can genuinely promote goals that are shared among Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other clinicians. The Hippocratic Society is not politically or religiously affiliated. It welcomes all who share our commitment to medicine as a healing profession. Importantly, the Society does not ask its members to set aside their moral, political, or religious commitments, and it recognizes that within a shared profession to heal, there is room for distinctive traditions of situating medicine within a well lived life and a well-ordered community.
Nor does the Society take positions on legal and policy issues or on contested bioethical questions, even as it recognizes that clinicians must do so in discerning what good medicine requires of them. To aid such discernment, we foster dialogue regarding important clinical topics. We seek to develop good clinical judgment and to practice conscientiously. We oppose policies that pressure practitioners to do otherwise, and we encourage participants to contend peaceably for good medicine in their own contexts.
Can this posture hold together a coalition of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other clinicians (including those with no religion) who share a commitment to fulfilling their healing profession? Can it do so without ignoring or minimizing real disagreements about what good medicine entails and without specifying further positions on controversial topics? This interfaith panel will consider these questions.
The panel includes four physicians with complementary expertise regarding the intersection of medicine, ethics, and religion; and with individual expertise regarding Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Two of the physicians are working to build out the Hippocratic Society, one in an academic medical center and one among premedical students at a prominent university.