Conference on Medicine and Religion: What Does It Mean to Care? Religious Traditions and Health Professions Today

On May 28-30, 2013 in Chicago - the second annual Conference on Medicine and Religion:  What Does It Mean to Care? Religious Traditions and Health Professions Today



At the heart of medicine is care. Medical care, surgical care, nursing care, wound care, palliative care, even spiritual care—almost everything health professionals do is advanced as a form of care. Yet patients, health professionals, and critics of medicine often question how much care there is in health care. Moreover, it is often unclear how health care fits into a faithful life, as understood in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.



The second annual National Conference on Medicine and Religion will provide a forum for scholars and health care professionals to ask what it means to care and how the traditions and practices of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam inform possible answers to the question.



What is the care that faith requires, with respect to one’s patients, one’s colleagues, and oneself? How are professionalized forms of care related to and potentially in tension with the care provided in other contexts? How do both types of care relate to the care taught by different religious traditions? What sort of care does contemporary medicine propose to provide and actually provide? 



What can we learn from paradigmatic expressions of care found within religious texts and historical or contemporary religious communities? How do illness experiences and health care practices inform and shape religious norms and practices? How do religious traditions and practices challenge or propose an alternative to conventional health care norms and practices?