Without sanctuary

I've been teaching medical students for 33 years. My lecture content concerns molecular biology and genetics. I do talk about sickle cell disease specifically, in a couple of contexts (genetics, molecular biology, gene therapy).

Over 20 years ago, I implemented problem based learning for the students in a course I directed. The idea was to get the students to think about the information from their basic science courses as applied to clinical problems. My hope was that they would also see the patients in the cases not as lab problems but as human beings.

I've spent my career at a Jesuit Catholic University. I've never been sure what that means or how it distinguishes the sort of medicine we teach and practice from secular medical schools. When I read this article, it reminded me how much work we still have to do.

"Imagine, I thought, if we all worked to create sanctuaries for our patients — in small patient-centered ways like poetry-filled rooms, but also in large systemic ways, like interrogating policies related to the interface between health care and the criminal justice system.

Imagine if practicing medicine required an oath to actively dismantle systems of oppression and build sanctuaries in their place.

Imagine if our Black patients came into our hospitals broken, tired, and weary, and instead of finding judgment and opposition, they found rest."

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2030623?query=WB