Compassionate Care: Helping Patients Find Meaning in Their Suffering and Addressing Their Spirituality

BUMC PROCEEDINGS 2001;14:352–357 The technological advances of the past century tended to change the focus of medicine from a caring, serviceoriented model to a technological, cure-oriented model. Technology has led to phenomenal advances in medicine and has given us the ability to prolong life. However, in the past few decades physicians have attempted to balance their care by reclaiming medicine’s more spiritual roots, recognizing that until modern times spirituality was often linked with health care. Spiritual or compassionate care involves serving the whole person—the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. Such service is inherently a spiritual activity. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, who has developed Commonweal retreats for people with cancer, described it well: