Suffering Absence: Hauerwas and the Challenges to Faithful Presence in Contemporary Medical Training

In this essay, the author draws on the theologian Stanley Hauerwas’ work to describe the central challenge of the contemporary medical trainee as an inability to be present to suffering patients. While the central challenge to the physician was once the moral resources required for such presence, today it is the temporal and bureaucratic demands bearing upon the contemporary resident preclude even the opportunity for this presence. In order to seek out such spaces when time does become available, the contemporary trainee requires a moral community, as Hauerwas notes “like a church,” to remind him or her of the moral commitment to be present to suffering patients even in the midst of such structural challenges. Summary: Contemporary residents must actively seek out the opportunity to be present to suffering patients and require moral communities to sustain this commitment.