New student organization works to unite faith and medicine
The Notre Dame Hippocratic Society was established in the spring of 2024 to help students explore how they can unite Catholic values to their future professions in medicine. The chapter already has 39 members, and it has begun hosting events ranging from seminars to social gatherings.
In an interview with the Rover, Frankie Machado, Vice President of Notre Dame’s Hippocratic Society, explained the group’s aim. Each semester, the society focuses on different questions related to topics of faith and the practice of medicine. This semester, the group is considering the question: “What is the human person and its end?”
Twice a month, students in the chapter meet and discuss a topical text over dinner. Physicians from campus and the South Bend community lead the seminars, typically drawing from a “case or personal experience” related to that week’s text.
On September 17, the society hosted one of these seminars and discussed readings from St. Thomas Aquinas, relating them to this semester’s guiding question. The dinner included clinicians and was open to all students but was geared specifically towards those on the “pre-med” track.
In addition to these seminars, the society hosts events in which speakers present on their professional work as it relates to the seminar conversations. The society also puts on social events—their next gathering is an October 6 screening of the movie Gattaca, a film that poses questions about eugenics and humanity.
While the Hippocratic Society is not Notre Dame’s first club aimed at educating future doctors, it has a particular emphasis on the intersection between Catholicism and medical practice. Other campus organizations, like the American Medical Women’s Association and the Multicultural Pre-Medical Society, seek to provide communities for specific groups in the medical field. However, the Hippocratic Society is unique in its striving to “embrace medicine as a sacred profession” and “help medical practitioners to flourish in serving their patient’s genuine good.”
A junior in Pasquerilla East Hall expressed appreciation for the society’s focus in a comment to the Rover. “I like the group because it’s a valuable exercise to consider the ethical dilemmas that will likely occur in my future career as a physician and think through how these situations can be approached,” she said. “It’s also helpful to have the insight from the physicians that attend the meetings.”
Sophomore Federico Celis echoed this praise. He told the Rover, “The Hippocratic Society is an excellent organization for students looking to build their understanding of medicine through a philosophical lens. I have learned a lot from the seminar-style discussions due to the great inputs from other students as well as medical professionals.”
The Hippocratic Society is a chapter of the National Hippocratic Society, an organization of physicians and students that “exists to form and sustain clinicians in the practice and pursuit of good medicine,” according to their website. By “cultivating virtues that characterize good medical practitioners,” the National Hippocratic Society aims to address underdeveloped medical ethics in schools across the country. The Notre Dame chapter is housed under and financially supported by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
The National Hippocratic Society was first founded in 2020 when two groups, the Society for Just Medicine and the Hippocratic Forum, united. In its conception, the society released its curriculum in the form of podcasts and online meeting opportunities with medical trainees. In 2021, the Hippocratic Society hosted its first undergraduate seminar at the Abigail Adams Institute in Boston. In the following year, the society’s first university chapter opened at Washington University School of Medicine.
As of 2024, the Hippocratic Society has extended its reach to seven universities. These include the additions of Harvard University, the University of Texas, Stanford University, Duke University, and the University of Dallas. A chapter has also been established at the Brooke Army Medical Center, the U.S. Army’s premier medical institution in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Machado called the need for the Hippocratic Society at Notre Dame “vital.” He told the Rover, “The modern medical industry and medical schools often fail to engage their … professionals and medical students with these moral questions and the moral formation needed to make high-risk decisions in the lives of their patients.”
He remarked that the society furthers Notre Dame’s mission “because the university is a place that prides itself in the genuine pursuit of the truth and … forming its students holistically in mind, body, and spirit so that they can go out and serve those around them to the best of their ability.”
The society will hold its next seminars on October 8 and October 29.
Kathryn Bowers is a senior majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies and theology from Dallas, Texas. Tell her your favorite cheese (even if it’s vegan cheese) at kbowers2@nd.edu.
Kathryn Bowers is a senior majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies and theology from Dallas, Texas. Tell her your favorite cheese (even if it’s vegan cheese) at kbowers2@nd.edu.
This article was updated on Sept. 26th noting the society’s relationship with the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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