Givers, Doers, & Thinkers—A Podcast on Philanthropy and Civil Society · Jeremy Beer

John Rhee & the crisis of meaning in medicine

·44 min·2 clips

During COVID ICU night shifts, Rhee says he lost the moral dimension of his work and asked why he was doing it.

The episode opens with Jeremy Beer introducing Dr. John Rhee and the Hippocratic Society. Beer places the conversation within the season’s focus on nonprofit innovators and civil society. Rhee is described as a board-certified neurologist, neuro-oncologist, and palliative care specialist. He works at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and teaches neurology at Harvard Medical School. The interview begins with the question of what the Hippocratic Society is trying to change. Rhee answers by describing the loss of the moral dimension in his own medical training. He says he became very efficient at the tasks that residency rewarded. That efficiency, he argues, can become the wrong measure of a good physician. He describes a corporatized healthcare environment in which hospital incentives and patient care do not always point in the same direction. He notes that the institution may be pulled toward monetary goals while the physician is trying to serve an individual patient. When those goals conflict, he suggests, the most efficient option is not always the most humane one. He gives the example of sitting with someone in anguish. That kind of presence is not efficient. He argues that it is still the right thing to do. The conversation then returns to his own sense of drift and the deeper reason behind his work. Beer asks when the Hippocratic Society began and what it was meant to accomplish. Rhee says he founded it as a first-year neurology resident in Boston. The timing overlapped with the arrival of COVID. The society is presented as one response to the moral confusion he was seeing in medicine. The discussion stays close to questions of vocation, formation, and institutional pressure. By the close, Beer treats the work as hopeful rather than merely corrective. Rhee’s answer is framed as an attempt to heal medicine by restoring its ethical foundations.

As heard by us

A measured case for medicine as a moral calling, not just efficiency.

Dr. John Rhee's conversation with Jeremy Beer is less a profile than a steady case for medicine as a moral practice, not just a system of outputs.

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Why you'd press play

You want a clear-eyed conversation about why medicine can feel morally off course.

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