Spirituality in Medicine/Surgery: Time for a New Awareness?

As physicians/surgeons, we cannot “understand” (on a metaphysical level) why people suffer or die. Despite our advanced training in modern technological advances on the frontiers of immunology, gene therapy or minimally invasive surgical techniques, individually we remain steadfastly and unchangingly human, and often struggle with both anguish and misery in the lives of patients and families we serve (as well as our own).