Richard Payne, MD, Director of the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life and member of the award selection committee writes about the need for physicians to “be still” with their patients, and how this award will assist meeting that goal.
We’ve become technologically efficient enough to diagnose our patients without taking the time to be still and sit with them. Medical knowledge will always be incomplete if it lacks a relationship with the patient. It is only through relationship that values, personality, and soul emerge. These things make a body human as much as arms, legs, and organs. There can be no substitute for relationship in medical treatment.Nominations for the four awards, totaling $95,000, are being accepted until September 26, 2009.
Physicians truly do care for our patients. Unfortunately, the limitations of efficiency and business have caused many of us to lose sight of the person for all the care we provide. Physicians must slow down and be still in order to find relationships with their patients. Loud voices are needed to call us back to caring in the way of friends.
For these reasons we should applaud the wise decision of the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation and the Hastings Bioethics Center to begin a new award to recognize caring physicians. The purpose of the award is to hold up role models of clinical and doctoring practice in palliative and end-of-life care that focus on relationships as an integral part of medical care.
