A Wider Frame

On Philosophy, Art, and the Making of a Physician

Last month, we wrote about our growing international series - how conversations with surgeons and physicians across the globe stretch us, unsettle us in a good way, and remind us that medicine is practiced inside culture. Perspective changes everything.

Connecting with so many of you this past weekend in NYC for the Surgeon On The Edge book release party only helped cement this - we need to get out of our shells. Real, human connection is increasingly missing from medicine. So how do we address it?

A new column in our Progress Notes, Philosophical Physicians, by Kate Buhrke, DO, provides a nice example of how we can look at our world not only through the standard lens of medicine. The column examines residency training by using the major philosophical schools of thought, asking what Kantian philosophy, Utilitarianism and others reveal about what it actually means to become a doctor. It's disorienting at first. The ideas aren't obscure. But they resurface a question most of us quietly let go somewhere in training, or never ask at all: What is this training doing to us, not just professionally, but as people?

Medicine narrows you. It has to. The body is specific, the pager always goes off, and if you don’t stay focused, there’s usually someone ready to take your spot. Over time, that necessary narrowing can calcify into a genuine shrinking of intellectual and emotional range. We read journals. We listen to medical podcasts. We talk, almost exclusively, to other physicians. Efficient. Also a little hermetic.

Insularity is insidious. When everyone around you trained the way you trained, endured the same hierarchy, measures success by the same metrics, it becomes easy to mistake that world for the world. The frustrations feel universal. The system feels total.

It isn't.

One of the quiet ambitions of the Hippocratic Collective has always been to widen that aperture. It's why we launched Ex Vivo. It's why we have an Artist in Residence. It's why some of our most meaningful conversations happen with people who have never seen a call room. Exposure to different ways of seeing changes the seer.

Structural problems need structural solutions, and we harbor no illusions that better reading habits fix prior authorizations. But it is within reach, for all of us, to be more reflective, more imaginative, more philosophically honest about what we're doing. To read outside the field. To wrestle with ideas that aren't billable. To understand that suffering can be illuminated through actual literature as much as through studying the Literature.

Philosophy, art, history, theology: correctives to medicine's excesses. They remind us that the patient in front of us is a person embedded in narrative, culture, and meaning. That we are too.

The better-rounded the physician, the more grounded the practice. Breadth doesn't dilute depth. It anchors it.

Surgeon On The Edge Release Party

In case you missed it, our CEO, Frances Mei Hardin, released her debut memoir, Surgeon On The Edge, this past week. And we kicked it off in style in NYC! Thank you to everyone who attended - we had an incredible turnout and it’s always a pleasure to meet any members of this collective in the real world. And the book tour is just getting started - check out francesmei.com/surgeon-on-the-edge for the remaining dates.

A Few Of Our Favorite 'Progress Notes' From February

Daily Analgesia - An Open Apology to Your “Passionate” Surgical Colleague

By Latha Panchap, MD

A surgeon once said that if he were ever called difficult, he would respond by saying “I’m not angry. I’m committed. And sometimes that comes out strong.” On behalf of every resident, circulating nurse, scrub tech, consultant, and other colleague that you interact with on a daily basis, I want to apologize for horribly misinterpreting your dedication to healthcare and pledge to respect the sanctity of your tantrums.

Sleep Reform for Physicians

By Laura Vater, MD, MPH

This fellowship is very important to me, and I want to perform at a high level. I do not think it is good for patient care or for my health to work all day in addition to all night without rest, especially when my daytime responsibilities are supportive in nature. With this volume of overnight call, I find it reasonable to be excused from daytime duty hours. I’m willing to find any workable solution.

Thanks again for your support.

Philosophical Physicians

By Kate Buhrke, DO

The hidden curriculum teaches that endurance is virtue, silence is safer, and that being treated as less than human is the price of admission. Deontology rejects that logic entirely. If residents are people of intrinsic value, then their dignity cannot be suspended for training. Their humanity is not a negotiable cost.

Get Out: A Horror Story of Medicine

By Sacha McBain, PhD

In healthcare, we still have far to go in acknowledging and addressing the legacy of medical racism and its ongoing harm. Peele challenges us to interrogate our assumptions and confront the historical and contemporary subjugation of Black people. Engaging with artistic and scholarly works that unsettle us is one way to begin examining how we have internalized these forces. Ethical medicine demands humility, structural awareness, and a commitment to truly seeing patients as whole people whose consciousness, dignity, and safety matter.

Your Podcast Binge List

We linked some YouTube and Spotify pages for you, but click here to listen to any of our shows on the platform of your choice.

• Social Rounds - Tony Chin-Quee, MD, Frances Mei Hardin, MD with Kate Buhrke, DO- If It’s Not Ortho, It’s Death & Other Lies We Tell Ourselves

• Fem MD - Lauren Umstattd, MD & Maheetha Bharadwaj, MD - What Surgical Training Doesn’t Teach You About Being Yourself

• Surgeons with Purpose - Mel Thacker, MD & Raymund King, MD, JD - Magician to Physician to Attorney to Actor

• Surgeon, Interrupted - Frances Mei Hardin, MD - You Can’t Be Sassy & Wrong: Lessons from the ICU Doctor

• The Other Human in the Room - Joan Chan, MD - Hospicing Modernity with Vanessa Andreotti

Explore Our Growing Podcast Network

Here’s what’s live and ready for your next commute, call-room break, or coffee run:

• Social Rounds - Tony Chin-Quee, MD + Frances Mei Hardin, MD

• Fem MD - Lauren Umstattd, MD

• Surgeons with Purpose - Mel Thacker, MD

• The Other Human in the Room - Joan Chan, MD

• Surgeon, Interrupted - Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Want to Get Involved?

Since launching, we’ve been blown away by how many physicians have reached out asking, “How can I get involved?”

Here’s how:

• Submit your writing for consideration on our blog

• Pitch us a creative idea or original column

• Apply to be a guest on a podcast

• Follow us and share our content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube 

The Collective only works because of voices like yours, and there’s always room for more.

Until next month,
The HC Team

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