Journal of general internal medicine
October 20, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Relationships, Resilience, and Relative Value Units: A Qualitative Study of the Promotion and Erosion of Humanistic Practice.
Volpe RL, Haidet P, Thompson BM, Dalke KB.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
Physicians value humanistic practice but describe system pressures on efficiency and productivity, and training culture itself, as eroding it.
What was studied
Qualitative study of four virtual focus groups with 26 US physicians across specialties and career stages, exploring how they understand, develop and experience humanistic practice.
Key findings
- Humanistic practice was seen as relational and inseparable from competent care.
- It was nurtured through relationships with patients, mentors and role models, which also supported resilience.
- Efficiency, standardization and commercialization pressures, and the culture of training, were seen as undermining it.
Clinical relevance
Educators and health system leaders should recognise that sustaining humanism requires changing the work environment and training culture, not only teaching it.
Who should care
Limitations
A small, self-selected, volunteer sample recruited by snowball sampling limits how far the themes generalise.
Support mentorship and protect time for patient relationships, and teach trainees how to preserve humanistic care within system constraints.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
Background
Formal medical curricula increasingly emphasize humanism, yet humanistic practice (HP) is often described subjectively and little is known about how practicing clinicians experience and develop HP within contemporary healthcare environments.
Objective
To explore how practicing physicians conceptualize, develop, and experience HP, and to identify implications for undergraduate medical education.
Design
Qualitative study using semi-structured focus groups.
Participants
Twenty-six physicians across multiple specialties and 15 U.S. states participated, recruited through professional listservs, investigator networks, and snowball sampling. Years in practice ranged from 0 to 53 (mean ~ 18).
Approach
Four 90-min virtual focus groups (six to seven participants each) were conducted in January-February 2023. Open-ended questions explored clinicians' understandings of HP and factors facilitating or impeding it. Transcripts were iteratively analyzed using thematic coding and reflexive discussion.
Key results
Five themes emerged. Clinicians described HP as relational and inseparable from competent care. HP was primarily cultivated through relationships with patients, mentors, and role models, and those humanistic relationships also supported clinician resilience. Participants noted ambiguities in defining HP and experienced substantial tensions between HP and healthcare system priorities focused on efficiency, standardization, and commercialization. The culture and pedagogies of medical training were also seen as undermining HP development, with clinicians describing their training as "damaging" to their native humanism.
Conclusions
Clinicians deeply value HP but face systemic and cultural forces that challenge its practice, making it essential to address both education and healthcare systems in sustaining humanistic care. Preparing future physicians to understand, resist, and creatively work within the constraints of an industrialized system is essential to ensuring that medicine remains a profoundly human endeavor.
DOI
10.1007/s11606-026-10719-6
PMID
42902119
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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