To practice humanism in medicine is to recognize the impact of my efforts upon the personal histories of patients and colleagues, and to celebrate the privilege in handling the identities of those whom I serve.

My parents always taught me that when I’m sad, to go do something good for someone else. This is the essence of humanism to me: to put another’s needs ahead of your own.

Humanism in medicine involves an attempt to understand and engage in each patient’s experience of disease, and from there begin to discover what these individual experiences reveal about the human experience as a whole.

Humanism is the practice of identifying, and honoring, both the individual and the collective human experience.