Our Mission
Helping doctors grow in resilience by challenging themselves according to their highest ideals.
We believe in transforming healthcare at the individual level by providing medical doctors and trainees the tools to aim for higher ideals, grow in professional development and character, form meaningful relationships, work at their best, and find space for reflection and recollection.
In the Hippocratic Forum, we are committed to the following principles and/or beliefs:
Mindful reflection on the principles by which we live gives us a sense of purpose in our work. This, in turn, helps us to work at our best, with deeper generosity and in a spirit of service.
Thriving on challenges in our work helps us to use our talents to their full potential in the service of others.
Authentic friendship with our fellow physicians grounds us in the importance of each other in living out our professional vocation and reminds us of the dignity of each human person.
What is our methodology?
We work with undergraduate pre-medical students through a home-grown curriculum, helping students to ask the big questions related to medicine:
What does it mean to be human?
What is the end of medicine?
What is the meaning of suffering?
What does it mean to die well?
Upon transitioning to medical school, participants partake in a second home-grown curriculum with a theory and practical portion. The theory-based portion takes place during the pre-clinical years, focused on character formation and growth in ideals and practical wisdom. The practical portion consists of coaching, discussion groups, and podcasts, focusing on practical ways to grow in ideals while working in the hospital.
“I enthusiastically endorse the Hippocratic Forum. The core of the medical profession—the relationship between patient and caregiver—is too often reduced to a mechanical process. The very nature of medical care is at risk because the care of the patient is reduced to the cure of solely his or her physical being.
The Hippocratic Forum will educate trainees to attention to the totality of the needs of the sick person. By restoring a more human approach to each patient’s care it will improve medical care. The Hippocratic Forum is an educational opportunity for trainees to re-awaken the ideals that originally led them to embrace the medical profession and therefore to deepen in their humanity as they carry out their medical practice.”