To See the Suffering.

The author notes the impressive growth in medical humanities programs, scholarly journals, textbooks, and national and international conferences as well as the convening of two recent national forums or boards addressing the potential of the humanities and the arts to improve medical practice. She also notes that the field of medical humanities seems to have shifted from addressing topics on the margins of medical education to equipping students with the foundational skills required for effective doctoring. This Invited Commentary proposes a number of personal, relational, and interpretive consequences to rigorous training in the humanities or the arts that might lead to improvement in the skills of doctoring. Where else but in hospitals with very ill patients and very young doctors who care for them are such skills needed the most? The author suggests that to see the suffering might be what the humanities in medicine are for, and that those who become capable of seeing the suffering around them in medical practice both experience the cost of countenancing the full burden of illness and death and, simultaneously, comprehend with clarity the worth of this thing, this life.