The Morals and Morale of Healthcare Providers | Farr Curlin, MD

Oct 28, 2025

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Many medical trainees are driven to medicine by their moral or religious principles — only to find that they are expected to check their principles at the patient’s door. When this happens, physicians and patients may lose the opportunity for deeper, more healing relationships.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Farr Curlin, a hospitalist and palliative care physician at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Curlin holds joint appointments in the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine and Duke Divinity School, where he studies the intersection of medicine, ethics, and religion.

From a young age, Dr. Curlin was intrigued by the moral dimensions of medicine. As a medical trainee, he began to study how the religious backgrounds of physicians inform their practice. He is the co-author of The Way of Medicine, in which he challenges the modern “provider of services” model and calls for a recovery of medicine’s spiritual foundations as a healing profession. Now, at Duke Divinity School, he spends significant time helping physicians re-center their practice around the question: “What is Good?”

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss attitudes toward religion in the medical profession and how many medical professionals worry that being openly religious may make them seem retrograde — or worse. We explore striking the balance between offering physician wisdom while respecting patient autonomy, consider whether the project of medicine makes sense when viewed through the lens of secular humanism, and reflect on how the physician attributes of humility and respect enable physicians to productively bring their full selves to the bedside, all while practicing medicine within a morally pluralistic society.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

2:48 - Dr. Curlin’s path to medicine and what drew him to a career at the intersection of religion and medicine

19:30 - Dr. Curlin’s thoughts on why doctors often feel they cannot be openly religious

35:45 - How Dr. Curlin would change medical training to create a deeper focus on personal commitments and moral conviction

41:15 - Exploring the limitations of artificial agnosticism at the patient’s bedside

51:50 - How fostering a spiritual connection to the work of healing can mitigate burnout

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