ABSTRACT
Medicine’s technical progress is astounding—yet human suffering persists. When doctors meet suffering persons as dysfunctional bodies merely needing a fix, the result is often alienation: A loss of meaningful connection, where patients feel unseen and physicians burn out. Medical education shapes ideas about competent doctoring by establishing a hierarchy of knowledge in which knowing about diagnoses is important, while knowing about persons and the good life is not. This chapter explores how unspoken and often unconscious learning can narrow the worldview, attitudes, and logic of medical students and physicians. The concept of resonance is introduced to highlight needs and experiences that generate good lives, with or without disease. Drawing on philosophy, research, and personal experience, the author calls for a transformation in how medicine is taught and practised—one that restores purpose and resonance for both patients and physicians. At the end an optimistic story is told about medical education that connects.
