The neglected heart of medicine and education: Why medicine ought to be kinder

Abstract

Medical school should teach and reward kindness more, nurturing our thoughts, and collating our kind acts. Through a reflection of my experiences with those working in health inclusion, I contend that our medical education should better prioritise a depth of understanding of another's feelings and needs. Recognising medical education as a powerful and formative experience for all of those involved, I emphasise the necessity of nurturing epistemic systems that allow kindness to flourish. Ultimately, I argue that we need to be helped to think more deeply about another, to better understand suffering and injustice, and how to best remedy them with due conscientiousness. Our education and practice must extend beyond simply discussing the social determinants of health and structural violence to become a questioning of the very moral and epistemic systems which propagate suffering.