Compassionate Care

What does Islam have to offer health-care ethics that cannot be found elsewhere? I do not mean to suggest that there is only one answer to this question, because there are many. However, I will focus on the elevated status of the patient as the recipient of compassionate care. Today, the primary medical ethical issue is no longer a quandary such as “Should we withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from a 90-year-old man with dementia?” Such questions are, of course, important. However, the primary issue is that the medical profession is losing its soul to technology and dehumanized care in which patients feel overbiologized and depersonalized, nothing more than “the kidney in room 5.” I ask you here today, in the name of Allah the merciful and compassionate, to be the ones who provide leadership in solving this crisis in medical care. Historians of medical ethics and bioethics rightly begin with Hippocratic ethics (400-300 BCE). We are familiar with the Hippocratic Oath and its influence. One finds in the ancient Greeks and Romans absolutely no passionate concern for the patient. There is no sense that the Hippocratic physician should go out of his way to help a needy patient. The spirit of Greco-Roman medical ethics is more or less casual with regard to the patient’s good. One has no image of the physician who goes out of his way or sacrifices ease in order to respond to the patient in need. In fact, for all its strengths, the Hippocratic ethos excludes from care slaves, poor people, and dying patients. Certainly the oath is clear in prohibiting the use of a deadly drug or abortifacient. It affirms confidentiality and “do no harm” and has many other strengths. But that passion for the patient in need, no matter how inconvenient, is simply not part of the ethos. The Hippocratic tradition is elitist, rather than devoted to patients in the spirit of equal regard. It really operates at the level of medicine as a career (careo) rather than anything deeper. There is no real call to serve. Then comes the great period of the Judeo, Christian, and Islamic traditions (est. 400 to 1750 CE). Here the physician is no longer casual but rather called by God to heal the sick regardless of their circumstances, degree of illness, or ability to pay. The Islamic Code of Medical Ethics of 1981, ratified by the First International Conference on Islamic Medicine and endorsed by many Islamic countries, vividly articulates this depth of calling to serve the needy. Article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5915/43-3-9219 Video DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5915/43-3-9219V Compassionate Care Panel Discussion