On one of my first days of medical school, I shuffled into a lecture hall surrounded by professional looking individuals as we had done the days before. This similar routine persisted for a few days as we became oriented to our new school. Leadership had indoctrinated us with professionalism, administrative staff had terrified us to the point of avoiding any patient information for fear of being sent wherever they send HIPAA violators, and the resident financial guru helped us slide into the reality that we are all financially doomed by debt. This flow of lectures seemed to follow every day of orientation, until one of the days, a dean of the school stood up and told us all we were shamen. He aimed to convince us that we were all now healers. He artfully wove together a narrative musing that for thousands of years, and still in many places today, traditional healers are who people turn to when they were in need. Healers throughout time have held the role of meeting people where they are, understanding their illness and applying the knowledge and wisdom gained through years of study.
The healers of old did not offer evidence-based medicine, immediate imaging, risk stratification or even don the prestigious white coat. Instead, healers connected to a person’s belief in the healer’s ability and offered to them the best treatment they could muster. There was much left up to uncertainty. These traditional healers birthed many of the medicines in our modern repertoire, yet I think in our newfound world of sterility, we have forgotten how to wade into the uncertainty with our patients. I do not mean wade into the uncertainty of medical decision making, which procedure is correct, or “Doc, what do you think?” I mean the murky uncertainty of human beliefs.
Until modernity crept into existence, a healer would live out their calling within in the same cultural and religious milieu of the people for whom they were caring. This unified their relationship and simplified their understanding. Cultural and religious competency was more or less a non-issue as there were only one culture and one religion represented. Both people would be familiar with their culture and be living in the same realm of religious beliefs. Trespasses or marginalization would be rare or at least in line with the expectations of the society.
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