Renowned medical anthropologist and Harvard educator Dr. Arthur Kleinman emphasized the importance of providing exceptional care in the healthcare field as he delivered the fall 2024 Presidential Lecture at Utah Valley University on Nov. 14.
Renowned medical anthropologist and Harvard educator Dr. Arthur Kleinman emphasized the importance of providing exceptional care in the healthcare field as he delivered the fall 2024 Presidential Lecture at Utah Valley University on Nov. 14.
“If we wanted a rubric under which care falls, it’s probably love,” Kleinman began.
Kleinman outlined the elements of what he called “the soul of caregiving:”
In addition to his elements of caregiving, Kleinman stressed the challenges facing the medical profession in matters of caregiving, including caregiver burnout, financial stressors, familial issues, and gaps in knowledge and needs. According to Kleinman, these challenges make measuring the quality of care especially difficult.
“Hospitals substitute the efficiency of care with the quality of care,” Kleinman said. “It’s antagonistic to quality care. To measure the quality of care, you have to measure relationships, time spent, quality of communication, quality of history, taking physical exams, clinical judgment — this is where I'm very optimistic about the future.”
Kleinman proposed various solutions to truly improve care output in the healthcare field, including providing accessible, long-term care insurance, compensating families for insurance, and improving cognitive and social support for families.
“We can strengthen the normal training and professional caregivers so that care becomes the central value of what medicine is about,” he said.
After his remarks, Kleinman answered several questions from the audience, covering topics including apprenticeship, self-actualization, and prioritizing care in a bureaucracy.
