The path toward phenomenal healthcare

The path toward phenomenal healthcare: an interview with Casey Rentmeester, professor of philosophy and practitioner of medical humanities:

Casey Rentmeester is the Director of General Education and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bellin College in Green Bay, WI. He is author of the book Heidegger and the Environment and numerous articles on medical humanities, Continental philosophy, environmental philosophy, and world peace. He recently discussed his thinking on healthcare with Humanities Watch.

Humanities Watch: How can twentieth-century philosophy help us understand the place of the humanities today?

Casey Rentmeester: Philosophy has always been at the heart of the humanities, and twentieth-century philosophy in particular contains a deep repository of resources to help us understand the human experience, which is precisely the task of the humanities. I think one of the reasons for this is the previously unprecedented technological and scientific progress that occurred in the 20^th century. Persons went from living a largely locally-bounded and technologically unsophisticated existence to being able to not only witness the events of the world at one’s fingertips with the creation of the television and the internet, but also to travel much more easily and widely with the mass production of the automobile and the invention of the airplane.

Philosophers living during these transformations had deep and prophetic analyses on what was happening to the world before their eyes. For instance, Martin Heidegger, who is commonly regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth-century, wrote extensively on how the world shows up to us differently in the age of modern technology, and on what may be worth salvaging from our pre-modern understanding of the world. Michel Foucault, another giant in this tradition, provided penetrating analyses on topics that are still clearly relevant today, including sexuality, mental illness, criminal punishment, and the rise of scientific medicine.

One simply cannot find similar analyses that are still relevant today in many other philosophical traditions, simply because the twentieth-century thinkers lived through the changes and understood what the world looked like before the scientific, technological, and medical advances that many persons in contemporary Western civilization now take for granted. Their analyses provide a lens for us to understand the problems that we still deal with today, and the ability to understand what a different version of the contemporary human experience might look like.

HW:  With respect to the sciences, in what ways can the humanities offer a fuller perspective on their value (or limitations)?

CR: This is an extremely important question that I think scientists have begun to ask as well. Hans-Georg Gadamer, a student of Heidegger and an impressive philosophical force in his own right, argued that the central question of the modern age is “the question of how our natural view of the world—the experience of the world that we have as we simply live out our lives—is related to the unassailable and anonymous authority that confronts us in the pronouncements of science.” One simply cannot doubt the successes of science and technology. As Heidegger put it, “it would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil.” We are simply better off with biotechnological developments like vaccines, and we are similarly better off with technological devices that give us access to information on the internet.

At the same time, however, it is important for us to think about how it is possible that the internet, which can be used for so much good, can also help to get persons to question the efficacy of vaccines and deny vaccinations to their children, thereby putting persons at risk. The humanities can help to clarify questions like this and lend a critical eye towards the relationships between facts and values that inevitably occur as civilization advances. The humanities can also help us to realize that the scientific perspective is one perspective among many.

Given the success of science, some people have come to hold the view that science is the only legitimate avenue to understand reality. However, it is clearly the case that a myopically scientific perspective can lend us little to no help in understanding many of the things that are deeply dear to us as humans, such as music, art, religion, and literature that also help us understand the human condition. We need the humanities to help to navigate these questions of meaning, just as we need the sciences to help navigate in other realms.

HW: You have written about and conducted workshops on the limits of contemporary medical training. What would you like those in the healthcare field to learn from the humanities? Do you have a definition of “medical humanities”?

CR: I think the single most important lesson to keep in mind as a health professional is that your first and foremost obligation is to respect your patient as a unique person. The thinker Karl Jaspers, who was both a medical doctor and a philosopher, provides a fitting commentary on this question in 1959 when he states that “only the physician who establishes personal relationships with particular patients fulfills the authentic vocation of the physician.”

This commentary can be applied to health professionals in general. Scientific medicine today has advanced to such an extent that we have extremely precise measurements from highly technological machines and are able to track these measurements seamlessly with the onset of the electronic health records era. It is important for us, though, amidst all of this technological precision and data collection, to keep in mind our primary obligation: to provide individualized patient care.

I think one of the primary goals of medical humanities is to ensure that we heed the meaning among the measurements and the metrics. This means that it is vitally important as health professionals to understand what matters to our patients and ensure that their voice is not only understood but heard. This is the task of all health professionals, and it is the task of those of us who work in medical humanities to help health professionals do this better.

In the workshops I have been involved in, I’ve found that many health professionals themselves crave more personalized interactions with their patients but are dictated by forces of efficiency and productivity, a tendency that Charles Taylor refers to as “the primacy of instrumental reason” wherein “maximum efficiency, the best cost-output ratio, is its measure of success.” The medical humanities can help to make the case for complementing instrumental reason with the prioritization of personalized patient care.

HW: What is the role of the liberal arts college today? What can it offer students and community that distinguishes it from other institutions of higher education?

CR: This question really hits home for me, as I was trained at a liberal arts college during my undergraduate work and then served as a professor for a liberal arts college early in my academic career. I now work for a small health sciences college, Bellin College, that has a deep appreciation for the liberal arts as we strive to form well-rounded health professionals who think critically and respect diverse perspectives.

I think one of the primary roles of liberal arts today is to educate our students to be well-rounded citizens who have the ability to think on their own, ask meaningful and relevant questions about the human condition, and decipher truth from falsity amidst the plethora of misinformation and disinformation that surround us. I think that there is clearly a place for the technical trades, and some students are certainly better suited to thrive in those environments. There is also undoubtedly the need for abstract thinkers who are willing to take on creative ideas and see where they may lead.

What I get most excited about, though, is when the theoretical meets the practical and this marriage leads to better lives for persons. I see this happening in not only the medical humanities, but also in environmental humanities and other inherently interdisciplinary endeavors. Liberal arts colleges are designed to provide students with a holistic education, and thus serve as a fitting breeding ground for these much-needed innovative combinations. More specialized colleges like the one in which I currently serve also need not only to recognize the importance of the humanities, but integrate them broadly into their curricula to ensure our professionals are well equipped to work with their hearts, as well as their heads.