Forming Clinicians for the Human Work of Medicine
The Trent Center for Bioethics, Medical Humanities, and History of Medicine brings the humanities into sustained conversation with medical education and clinical practice — forming clinicians with the moral imagination, historical perspective, and practical wisdom to care well for patients and serve the common good.
Excellent medicine requires more than knowledge and technical competence.
Scientific discovery, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies are rapidly expanding what medicine can do. Yet medicine still depends on clinicians capable of responding to suffering, exercising judgment amid uncertainty, attending to patients as persons, and asking what medicine is for.
How should we care for people in suffering? • What do patients need beyond knowledge and technical skill? • What kind of people must clinicians become to practice medicine well?
A Journey Through the Trent Center
From a student’s first exploration of medicine to a clinician’s life in practice, the Trent Center creates opportunities for reflection, community, and formation across the arc of a medical career.
BIOETHICS -- What ought we to do—and who ought we to become?
MEDICAL HUMANITIES — How do we see and understand the person before us?
HISTORY OF MEDICINE — How did medicine become what it is—and what can it become?
Together, these disciplines help clinicians see more clearly, judge more wisely, and care more humanely.
Forming the Future of Medicine
Help ensure that as medicine becomes more technologically powerful, it remains deeply human. Philanthropic investment allows the Trent Center to form students, residents, and faculty; support leading scholars; confront the ethical challenges created by emerging technologies; and extend Duke-developed models beyond Duke.
