In today’s episode, two physicians explore the problem of suffering in medicine. They address questions like: What does it mean to care for those who suffer? And what would it take to restore dignity to every patient interaction?
You’ll hear from Lydia Dugdale, a primary care physician and medical ethicist at Columbia, and Michael Menchine, an emergency care physician and professor at the University of Southern California. In this conversation, they reflect on the role of clinicians in caring for patients, how our healthcare system can better respond to personal suffering, and explore how their religious and nonreligious worldviews help them make sense of suffering.
This forum was held at USC in May 2025. Thank you to the student planning team for making this event possible.
Lydia Dugdale
Michael Menchine
In Christianity, God became human in the form of Christ and suffered this unbearable anguish of death on a cross. I think this has, through the history of Christianity, given Christians a sense of solidarity and suffering with a God who knows what suffering is.
I think the biggest lie in medicine is the idea that there is a fix for everything. There's this old adage in medicine, that we "cure sometimes, treat often, and comfort always." But we have completely inverted it. We think we need to cure always, treat sometimes, and comfort if you have extra time before you go home.
There are times for self-preservation in medicine, when you can't give the fullness of yourself to a patient. But be mindful that there's a human impulse to try to avoid suffering. Don't run from it. Press in with your patients—not embracing suffering, but not abandoning them.
You cannot go through medical training alone in isolation—you need to have a community of support. It's the only way to go on caring well for patients. We bear our anguish and our suffering together.
