Compassionate solidarity

ABSTRACT Suffering is the experience of distress or disharmony caused by the loss, or threatened loss, of what we most cherish. Such losses may strip away the beliefs by which we construct a meaningful narrative of human life in general and our own in particular.The vocation of physicians and other health professionals is to relieve suf-fering caused by illness, trauma, and bodily degeneration.However, since suffering is an existential state that does not necessarily parallel physical or emotional states, physicians cannot rely solely on knowledge and skills that address physiological dysfunction. Rather, they must learn to engage the patient at an existential level. Unfortunately, however, medical pedagogy encourages “detached concern, ” which devalues subjectiv-ity, emotion, relationship, and solidarity.The term “compassionate solidarity ” summa-rizes an alternative model, which begins with empathic listening and responding, re-quires reflectivity and self-understanding, and is in itself a healing act. Poetry, along with other imaginative writing, may help physicians and other health professionals grow in self-awareness and gain deeper understanding of suffering, empathy, compas-sion, and symbolic healing. IN MEDICINE THE WORDS pain and suffering are so frequently in tandem that formany physicians pain-and-suffering glides off the tongue as a single concept. Suffering tends to be treated as merely the psychological or personal dimension of pain. It follows, then, that since pain and other unpleasant symptoms cause the suffering, this negative psychological reaction should be eliminated by treating pain or, better yet, by curing the disease.Thus, the primary focus of research and teaching about pain-and-suffering is on nocireceptors and pharmacology