The Hippocratic Society carries out its mission in two primary ways.
Moral and Professional Training.
The Hippocratic Society promotes the moral and professional formation of its members from premedical training onward. Through mutual study, dialogue, and practice, participants train their attention on exemplars of virtues such as courage, generosity, and sincerity, while they practice cultivating such virtues in themselves.
In dialogue with seminal texts from the arts and humanities, they contemplate the nature of the human person and of human health, learning to orient and integrate the use of medical science and technology.
Serious and Open Discourse.
The Society also sponsors fair, serious, and open discourse about the most important questions facing medical practitioners in our time. Against the tendency in academia to ignore or suppress disagreement and dissent, the Hippocratic Society promotes public dialogue about difficult questions, confident that by reasoning together medical practitioners can discern better how to serve our patients and fulfill our profession.
If we succeed, by 2035 every major academic medical center will have an active chapter of the Hippocratic Society. A dense network of senior clinicians will serve as mentors to trainees, and a parallel network of clinician chapters will support practitioners across the United States and beyond.
Through the hippsoc.org portal, trainees and clinicians will access a rich set of resources that individuals and groups can use to study and grow, dialogue and discern. Members will work within their health care institutions and professional organizations to prioritize patient health, good clinical judgment, and conscientious practices.
The success of the Hippocratic Society will be measured not only by the number of chapters created or symposia held, but in the character and flourishing of the practitioners who participate in this community. HippSoc members will be recognized by their peers and patients alike as exemplars of the medical profession—as trustworthy healers characterized by knowledge and skill, wisdom and compassion, courage and integrity.
Prudence, properly construed, is an indispensable virtue of the medical life, essential to the telos of medicine – a right and good healing action for a particular patient – and essential as well to the telos of the physician qua human being, the life of fulfillment and flourishing.
Timeline
An Idea Emerged
A number of physicians consider forming an association to recover and renew the commitment to medicine as a healing practice: precursor to Society for Just Medicine.
Forum Founded with Grant
Hippocratic Forum started through a grant from Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education and inspired by the methodology of OptimalWork. Podcasts launched, and initial group of medical trainees start meeting online.
Undergrad Seminar Launched
Hippocratic Forum officially launched an undergraduate pre-medical seminar at Abigail Adams Institute. Podcast episodes released on all major platforms.
First Chapter Launched at Wash U.
With support of TalentED, gatherings held to refine ideas of the organization Society for Just Medicine, which was launched later that year. Hippocratic Forum medical chapter started at Washington University Saint Louis Medical School.
Hippocratic Society Merger
Decision to merge Society for Just Medicine and Hippocratic Forum into the Hippocratic Society. First undergraduate pre-med chapter started at University of Dallas, and medical school-based chapter started at Harvard Medical School.
New Chapters and Conference
Chapters started at Duke, Stanford, University of Texas at Austin, and Notre Dame. First Hippocratic Society Conference.
