When illness enters our lives, health can suddenly seem like everything. A diagnosis can narrow our attention to the next scan, procedure, medication or laboratory result. These things matter. Yet, even excellent healthcare cannot answer every question about what makes a life good. We were made for more than physical health. We were made for relationship with God and with one another.

This is why the purpose of healthcare matters. Is healthcare simply a collection of services offered by technicians to consumers? Is the clinician an expert who should make decisions for the patient? Or is healthcare a moral practice with a purpose? Christian Hippocratism offers a better answer. It understands healthcare as a healing, helping and caring relationship ordered toward the good of the patient and, ultimately, the glory of God.

Hippocratic medicine is often summarized by the phrase, “Do no harm.”¹ Avoiding harm is essential, but the Hippocratic tradition asks more of us. It calls healthcare professionals to use their knowledge and skill to benefit the sick, to maintain competence and confidentiality, to practice within proper limits and to preserve trust.² Its center is not a rulebook but an oath: when a person becomes ill and seeks our help, we will place our abilities in service of that person’s good.³

That promise is not limited to physicians. Nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, therapists, pharmacists, chaplains and other healthcare professionals all participate in the work of helping, healing and caring. Their training and responsibilities differ, but each can practice Hippocratism by pursuing the patient’s good rather than personal gain, institutional convenience or technical achievement alone.² Nurse practitioners, for example, bring together their nursing commitment to relational care with the responsibility to diagnose, treat, prescribe and promote health.⁴ Christian Hippocratism can guide this distinct practice just as it can guide the work of the larger healthcare team.

Good healthcare rejects two opposite errors. The first is paternalism: the belief the clinician should simply decide what is best and impose that decision on the patient. Patients are not passive objects. They are persons whose stories, beliefs, hopes and responsibilities matter. We should tell the truth, listen carefully, explain options clearly and make decisions with patients and families whenever possible.²

The second error is the provider-of-services model.⁵ In this model, the patient becomes a consumer, the clinician becomes a vendor and healthcare becomes whatever service the customer requests. Not every request promotes health or respects the purposes of healthcare. A faithful clinician is not a salesperson or technician. Good healthcare requires moral judgment, professional integrity and honest conversation about what healthcare can and cannot rightly do.

Between paternalism and consumerism is a relationship of trust. The clinician brings knowledge, experience and a commitment to the aims of healthcare. The patient brings intimate knowledge of his or her life, values, burdens and hopes. Together they seek the patient’s good. Sometimes this means pursuing cure. Sometimes it means restoring function or relieving suffering. When cure is no longer possible, it means remaining present and caring well. Healthcare is finite, but care does not end when cure is unattainable.

Christian Hippocratism gives this healing relationship a distinctly Christian foundation. It begins with the imago Dei: every human being is made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Human dignity therefore does not depend on independence, intelligence, productivity, age, health or social status. The infant, the person with profound disability, the confused older adult and the dying patient all possess the same God-given worth as the strong and healthy. Illness may change what a person can do, but it does not erase who that person is—one of God’s dignified creatures.

Christian faith also takes embodiment seriously. God created the human body and called His creation good (Genesis 1:31). In Jesus Christ, “The Word became flesh…” (John 1:14, NIV). Our bodies are not machines that can be redesigned without limit, nor are they disposable shells. They are part of who we are as creatures. Healthcare should therefore respect the body, seek its health and acknowledge its limits. Health is a genuine good, but it is not the highest good. If we make health everything, illness and disability may appear to make life less meaningful. Jesus tells us otherwise.

Human flourishing is not freedom from every limitation or the endless pursuit of comfort. Flourishing is found in relationship with God through Christ and expressed in loving relationships with others.² Saint Augustine captured this truth when he wrote that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.⁶ Even amid serious illness, a person may give and receive love, reconcile with family, worship, serve others and bear witness to hope. Healthcare can support these goods, but it cannot manufacture them.

This leads to imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Christian healthcare professionals are called not merely to admire Jesus but to follow Him in the way they see and serve the sick (Matthew 4:32; Matthew 8:16-17; Luke 6:19). Christ drew near to suffering people. He listened, touched, healed, spoke truth and showed compassion. To imitate Christ is to let our clinical work become transparent to His character: competent without pride, truthful without cruelty and compassionate without abandoning moral conviction.

The virtue that orders this work is agape, or self-giving love. Jesus commands us to love God and to love our neighbor (Mark 12:30-31). In healthcare, agape is not merely a feeling. It acts for another’s good. It sits at the bedside, protects confidentiality, tells difficult truths, seeks wise counsel, admits limits and refuses to abandon or end the person who cannot be cured. Like the Good Samaritan, it crosses boundaries and cares without asking whether the patient can repay the gift (Luke 10:25-37).

Christians in the early church preserved the Hippocratic documents for a reason.⁷ Christian Hippocratism therefore calls healthcare professionals to something both ancient and urgently needed: a covenant of trust with those who are sick. It protects patients from paternalism by honoring their voices and choices. It protects healthcare from consumerism by keeping care ordered toward healing, helping and the patient’s good. Most importantly, it reminds us that every clinical encounter involves two embodied persons standing before God.

The purpose of healthcare is not to conquer every limit or to satisfy every desire. It is to use our knowledge and skill faithfully for those who entrust themselves to our care. When we honor the image of God in every patient, imitate Christ and practice self-giving love, healthcare becomes more than a transaction. It becomes a relationship through which we help the sick, care for the vulnerable and glorify God.

References

[1] Askitopoulou H, Vgontzas AN. The relevance of the Hippocratic Oath to the ethical and moral values of contemporary medicine. Part II: interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath-today’s perspective. European Spine Journal. 2018;27(7):1491-1500. doi:10.1007/s00586-018-5615-z

[2] Kay JM. Human Flourishing and Christian Hippocratism: A Philosophical and Theological Approach to Healthcare and the Good of the Patient. The New Bioethics. 2026;32(1):14–38. doi:10.1080/20502877.2025.2610886.

[3] Kay JM. The Nurse Practitioner’s Oath: A Christian Hippocratic Framework for Nurse Practitioners. Ethics & Medicine. 2026;40(1–2): Early Access. https://www.ethicsandmedicine.com/the-nurse-practitioners-oath-a-christian-hippocratic-framework-for-nurse-practitioners/

[4] Kay JM. The nurse practitioner ethicist: Distinct from a nurse ethicist?. Nursing Ethics. 2025;32(8):2629-2638. doi:10.1177/09697330251350386

[5] Curlin, F., and Tollefsen, C., 2021. The way of medicine: ethics and the healing profession. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

[6] Augustine, 1998. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press.

[7] Ferngren, G., 2009. Medicine and health care in early Christianity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

***The views expressed in this article are the author’s sincerely held religious beliefs and do not represent any institution, employer or university.***

About the Author

Jesse Michael Kay has practiced in pediatrics for more than 12 years. He is a pediatric nurse practitioner, healthcare ethics consultant and assistant professor of pediatrics in palliative care, critical care and clinical ethics at Baylor College of Medicine. He writes and researches on bioethics and philosophies of medicine, healthcare and nursing. Most importantly, he is a child of God, a husband, a father of two and a Bible study teacher at his church.