This week on Social Rounds, we’re joined by returning fan favorite Dr. Kate Buhrke—rogue agent of chaos and resident philosopher—to answer a deceptively simple question: can philosophy actually make the pain of medicine make sense?

What starts as required reading quickly spirals into a full-blown debate on utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and whether the system of medical training is justified simply because it “works” for most people. Along the way, we try (and struggle) to define what a hedon unit is, question whether residency is ethically defensible, and confront the uncomfortable reality that medicine may be built on competing moral frameworks with no clear answer.

We also get into:

• Why philosophy feels both clarifying and completely useless
• The ethics behind the Match and graduate medical education
• Whether outcomes alone justify suffering in training
• Aristotle’s “middle path” and what it means for modern physicians
• The Ship of Theseus and what it says about identity, change, and who we become in medicine

Equal parts thoughtful and unhinged, this episode lives in the tension between wanting answers and realizing there might not be any.

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Hosted by:

Tony Chin-Quee: @wheyouat

Frances Mei Hardin: @francesmeimd

Guest: Kate Burhke, DO

Connect with Kate:

https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/kate-buhrke-do

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective