Moral, Philosophical and Religious Considerations in Hopeless and Dying Patients: A Seminar with Medical Students.

Abstract

Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in the November, 1970, issue of The Linacre Quarterly. Dr. Galla was, at the time, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. His essay emphasizes the importance of moral formation in the practice of medicine, as well as the difficulty in encouraging such formation in a multicultural environment. The need for an understanding of the connection of religion to medicine—and the importance of religion on the care of patients—is as important, and as difficult, today as it was then. Well-rounded physicians must not only understand the importance of moral considerations in practice from their own perspectives, but must also appreciate the importance of religion to the patients they treat.