Does a hospital have a soul?

Julie Salomon poses this question following the death of a young mother cared for by so many different providers: "Does a hospital have a soul?" (281). This is one of the key questions driving her to investigate the forces and characters that combine in the institution of a hospital.

In Hospital Salomon deals with the complex junction of altruism, benevolence, and the Hippocratic Oath with bottom lines, egotism, and SOMETHING ELSE. In this fresh light, it is almost obscene that acts as sacred as healing and dying occur in an institution, never mind one riddled so thoroughly with politics. I left her book imagining cancer patient Ms. Hernandez dying next door to Dr's. Kopel and Bashevkin's feud.

That doctors do not get along all of the time is not terribly surprising. It is a bit shocking, however, to hear stories of screaming doctors, doctors who find their own behavior intolerable, and a new set of "playground rules" to help everyone get along in the form of the Code of Mutual Respect. Better suited for an elementary school classroom than a work place, this code seems to boil down the Golden Rule and common courtesy.


In other readings this week we explored the complicated dynamics that arise when hospitals provide care for patients who do not pay them. Law makers grapple with whether hospitals or doctors can be forced to work pro bono raising the question of whether caring for the sick is the the obligation or merely the vocation of physicians. The Library Index article, written eight years ago, suggested that the needs of the uninsured were sizable and growing reaching a critical point presently. At the end of the day we must answer the question of who's responsibility is it to care for those who cannot care for themselves? Does this duty belong to the institution - regardless of fiscal sustainability, the physician - sworn to heal, the individual - who simply needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or society at large?