Quality Care and the Soul of the Physician

Abstract

Quality care for the patient is the source of vocational satisfaction and also a measure of physician well-being. Both are impacted positively by the spiritual life of physicians which contributes significantly to resiliency in the midst of current stresses in medical care. Additionally, a majority of patients identify spiritually integrated care as desirable in their physician’s treatment. The author examines qualities of vulnerability, humility and compassion integral to the person of the physician who offers quality care to patients and which is prophylactic to higher risk of suicide among medical practitioners compared to other professionals. The original intent of the Hippocratic oath and the desire for a genuinely humane healing partnership has been under siege for some time now. Since Henry Ford introduced the mass assembly line, business has sought increasing efficiency in production with the consequence of increasing depersonalization of the healing relationship. The advent of computers and health care management as a business has reconfigured physicians to more and more cumbersome record-keeping ‘providers’ who in some cases are under pressure to see a new patient every 8-12 minutes. Short Note