By Elizabeth Corey In today’s middle-class American culture, the pressure to achieve is overwhelming. Schools, both secular and religious, are seen as the primary vehicle for such achievement. We encourage students to push themselves relentlessly toward excellence in academics, extracurriculars, and […]

Daniel E. Fountain Thirty years on mission in Central Africa changed Dr. Daniel Fountain’s thinking about his professional training, about current medical practice overseas and at home, and about the responsibility of the entire Christian community to promote health initiatives. Digging into biblical precepts and patterns, he has developed a theology of human wellness that […]

Robert D. Orr “How do we make ethical decisions within a health-care context which are both faithful and compassionate? Robert Orr provides us with a vital map of the ethical terrain and guides us carefully and sensitively into the complex area of theology and health-care ethics. Deep, practical, and theologically informed, this book will be […]

“The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.” This is the opening statement and basic contention of Ivan Illich’s searing social critique. In Limits to Medicine Ivan Illich has enlarged on this theme of disabling social services, schools, and transport, which have become, through over-industrialization, harmful to man. In this radical contribution to […]

James K. A. Smith A wonderful book that tries to speak to both academic and popular audiences. Addressing themes like the theology of culture, liturgy, and formation, Smith argues that what we love determines how we live our day to day lives and the “liturgies” that accompany this. Ultimately, it is these habits and practices […]

David I. Smith and James K.A. Smith A collection of essays from university professors reflecting on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape their pedagogical strategies. Though not written directly about medical education, their experiments and candid reflections are very inspiring and challenging. From Ed. Get this book.

Warren A. Kinghorn, Matthew D. McEvoy, Andrew Michel, and Michael Balboni Co-written by several friends of the CCHF movement, this viewpoint argues that the modern professionalism movement fails to acknowledge the formative traditions which sustain the virtues it aspires to. Most significant is the suggestion of an “openly pluralistic” approach to engaging faith differences within […]

We argue that debate regarding whether and how physicians should engage religious concerns has proceeded under inadequate terms. The prevailing paradigm approaches dialogue regarding religion as a form of therapeutic technique, engaged by one stranger, the physician, upon another stranger, the patient. This stranger-technique framework focuses the debate on questions of physicians’ competence, threats to […]

Gail Geller A concise overview of the argument that tolerance for ambiguity among physicians and prospective medical students is a potentially helpful influence on increased professionalism, sustainable medical practice, and good patient outcomes. From Ed. View on PubMed.

The Good Stewardship Working Group In pursuit of better stewardship of scarce medical resources, this piece review recommendations by expert panels and research base for changing prevailing practice patterns in five specific areas of primary care, like imaging for low back pain and using antibiotics for sinusitis. A big part of the learning curve in […]

Gordon D. Schiff et al. This short piece highlights common-sense, evidence-supported principles that go against the grain of a medicalized, over-technical approach to healing. Useful for all patient populations, but especially among the poor. From Ed. Read on the JAMA website.

David Schenck and Larry R. Churchill This short piece in the Annals of Internal Medicine is a distillation of the book, Healers by the same authors.  Interviews with 50 physicians recognized as “healers” revealed eight skills as pivotal: do the little things; take time; be open and listen; find something to like, to love; remove […]

Frederic W. Hafferty and Ronald Franks This groundbreaking piece makes the case that medical schools are communities of moral formation. Hafferty and Franks introduced the notion of the “hidden curriculum” in medical education—a de facto series of implicit, formative influences that undercut the explicit ideals of medicine. From Ed. View on PubMed… 

Brian Lindman Lindman, a seminary graduate and former Vanderbilt student now working as a cardiologist at Washington University, gave this address at the commissioning service for Christian medical students in 2002. A powerful, raw, and sobering account of the caregiving choices—and spiritual opportunities—faced by physicians in training. From Ed. Perhaps the most significant personal transformation […]

In this article, the author examines the undervaluation of caregiving—taken to be the day-to-day provision of material and emotional support necessary to enable life and alleviate suffering—in contemporary biomedical training and practice. Taking a crosscultural approach, the author highlights the institutional structures, practices and values that support an increasingly technocratic and bureaucratic model of care […]

Daniel Sulmasy In this careful examination of the relation between spirituality and health care, Sulmasy explores the nature of illness and healing, describes empirical research on the effects of spirituality on health, and devotes special attention to the care of people at the end of life. From the publisher.  Get this book.

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. Unsparing in his judgment, Mark Noll ask why the largest single group of religious Americans–who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and […]