Medicine at the Crossroads: A Collection of Stories and Conversations to Forge a Vision for Health Care

Stories and Conversations to Forge a Vision for Health Care

Medicine at the Crossroads is a collection of essays based a column originally published in the Waco-Tribune Herald by renowned cardiologist Dr. Michael Attas. It touches on three perspectives – the physician, the patient, and the healthcare system – and addresses some of the most pressing questions in medicine today. Individually, each story of illness, medicine, and healing provides a tiny, fragmented glimpse into the heart of a problem. Collectively, it is Dr. Attas’s hope that these stories forge together to reveal a larger narrative truth.

The collection originated among scores of bright, inquisitive students in the classrooms of Baylor University, where Dr. Attas founded the Medical Humanities Program. The program was the first of its kind in the United States, and it redefined how students prepare for a career in health care. Dr. Attas and his students explored medicine and the human condition through stories of brokenness and redemption, pain and loss, and joy and despair.

But the stories that have emerged from Dr. Attas’s 40-year career are not just for students. The conversations are for all of us. Whether you are a physician, patient, or other participant in the healthcare system, may you be bold enough, humble enough, and vulnerable enough to listen to these stories—and to the stories of those around you—with wonder and awe.

While this collection may offer some solutions with “fear and trembling,” it does not dare claim to have all the answers. The purpose is simply to start conversations. So, let us take a collective breath and examine our personal feelings and expectations of medicine. May we each glimpse the possibilities and discover our own fresh, creative solutions.

Ultimately, the purpose of Medicine at the Crossroads is to help us find our way to compassionate, humane health care for all. Together, may we find healing—for ourselves, our loved ones, and our system.

What leaders are saying

“For years, Dr. Attas has been prescient about changes in medicine and the physician’s role. In a time of radical change in health care, when the very practice of medicine is in question, he shows us that the essential relationship is between the patient and the physician.”  

– United States Ambassador Lyndon L. Olson, Jr. 

“Candid, transparent, and provocative, this is a “stained glass” collection of stories for talking about health care through the lens of the medical humanities, helping us understand how the science and art of medicine intersect. A must-read for anyone entering or serving in health care.” 

– Joel T. Allison, FACHE, Retired CEO, Baylor Scott and White Health; Senior Advisor, Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership

“Dr. Attas reclaims ancient wisdom and offers a new vision. This is not only a handbook about recognizing patients’ needs in body and soul, but about how those holding life and death in their hands at work can recognize and meet their own needs of body and soul. I hope every clinician reads it.” 

– Kerry Egan, MDiv, Author of On Living

“At the intersection of faith and medicine, Dr. Attas grapples with the dilemmas and dissonances of modern medicine in stories that are both personal and prophetic. This important conversation about the future of health care reminds future healthcare professionals of their sacred duty to care for patients and urges us all to build a healthcare system based on compassion, wisdom, and justice.” 

– Lauren Barron, MD, Director, Medical Humanities Program, Baylor University

"In carefully crafted vignettes, Doctor Attas reveals the beating heart of medical practice: the life and death stories patients willingly share and to which the physician must respond. He knows--and shows--from much experience the crucial difference between curing and healing, and how the latter remains possible even when the former is not. The reader will find hard-won wisdom on every page."

- Brian Volck, MD, Pediatrician and Author, Attending Others: A Doctor's Education in Bodies and Words

"I am who I am because of the lessons of Dr. Attas. He empowered me to boldly live out my faith in an academic environment where, for the first time in my life, I found myself in the minority as a Christian. I continue to carry this with me on this journey that truly is a calling and a privilege."

- Allison Sellner, MD, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Baylor College of Medicine, Class of 2018, Graduated with Highest Honors

"Medicine at a Crossroads extends to a wider audience the opportunity to encounter Attas' compassionate wisdom. He is particularly insightful concerning the ever-changing technological and economic environment within which medicine is practiced in the twentieth-first century."

- Robert Baird, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Baylor University

"Touching, real-life experiences and a relevant point of view on health care."

- Jim Turner, Former Chairman, Baylor Scott and White Health System

"Attas generously allows us all to savor not only the for-mative privilege of being present for the wrenching, wonderful realities of human suffering and death, but also the profound and humane wisdom to be gleaned there, wisdom that informs each word in this remarkable book."

- Margaret Mohrmann, MD, PhD, Professor Emerita of Pediatrics, Medical Education, and Religious Studies at University of Virginia and Author, Medicine as Ministry