Anamnesis
Anamnesis is the art of taking a patient’s history: helping someone recall and tell the story needed to understand illness.
Fundamental Concepts
The Fundamental Concepts Curriculum explores ideas that are often taken for granted in medical practice. By investigating what these concepts mean on a deeper level, we learn what it means to fulfill the role of the physician as one who knows the nature of things (physica – the study of nature). This curriculum is used by our medical school chapters and utilizes the same format as our virtue curriculum, centering discussion around a clinical case and closing with practical applications, while also incorporating art.
Balance
Balance is the harmonious integration of life’s personal, professional, spiritual and cultural facets around a coherent identity and purpose.
Community
A community shares goods, purposes and a way of life.
Conscience
Conscience involves a commitment to live morally and a judgment about whether past or proposed actions honor that commitment.
Disease
Disease is a disturbance of a living process that impairs the body’s functioning.
Flourishing
Flourishing concerns the goodness and fulfillment of a life as a whole.
Health
Health concerns the well-functioning of a living organism as a whole.
Patient
A patient is a person who undergoes care in a relationship with a healer.
Personhood
Personhood asks what a person is and why that being has moral significance.
Physician
A physician is a healer, teacher and philosopher.
Profession
A profession is a publicly declared way of life in which expert knowledge serves those who need it, rather than primarily the practitioner’s gain.
Relationship
A relationship is a connection expressed in how people speak, act and respond to one another.
Spirituality
Spirituality concerns the search for ultimate meaning, purpose, transcendence, and connection with what a person considers significant or sacred.
Suffering
Suffering involves distress or hardship that may be physical, psychological, social or spiritual.
Virtue
Virtue is an excellence of character formed through choices and repeated practice.