The Core of Street Medicine: Peeling Back Social Justice and the Business Plan

Street Medicine has rapidly spread to become a global movement with over 100 programs worldwide on 6 continents. As the Street Medicine Institute prepares for the 13^th Annual Street Medicine Symposium this October in Allentown, PA, it’s right to explore why this movement has taken hold and how this innovative healthcare delivery plan has inspired hundreds of overworked medical providers to put on a backpack and work more long hours for free outside the traditional medical establishment. Although the explanation I put forth is in no way comprehensive, may it serve as an offering to explain the “core” of what those associated with the movement are experiencing by going to the people.

One of the first lessons taught to medical providers in their education is not to get emotionally involved in “cases.” This means not getting too close to patients—no crying, no hugs– and not experiencing what they’re experiencing. It’s become a matter of professionalism, that’s it actually UNPROFESSIONAL to care. When people come to us in the midst of some suffering, they are reduced to becoming a “case” so that we may avoid letting emotion crowd our better medical judgement. Inevitably, we come in contact with suffering and are faced with a choice. Humans without a pathological medical condition can’t meet the face of suffering and feel nothing so the choice is to either engage and take on suffering along with the patient, or disengage as a self-protective mechanism leaving the patient to suffer alone. Since the inception of our training we are taught to be professional and this means not becoming emotionally involved, the tendency is to disengage and leave the patient suffering alone.

There is no point in engaging a suffering patient unless you are suffering with them for a reason, suffering with joy. This can’t be accomplished with the goal of social justice or to fulfill a business plan. Justice depends on giving everyone his or her rightful due. This practiced in excess, especially in certain patients, can have disastrous consequences. In order to practice street medicine correctly, we must rise above justice to give everyone MORE than he is rightfully due. This is done through charity, or love.

Approaching street medicine through the lens of charity is essential because patients experiencing homelessness suffer a lot. This suffering is not just from material poverty which we can cure for a moment by offering food. They also suffer from emotional and spiritual poverty from being discarded by society; of feeling unwanted and unloved. If we are going out to cure, which as medical providers we must, then we also must engage with them in their suffering. This means not just giving medicine to relieve bodily suffering, but to cure means relieving the spiritual and emotional suffering they also carry. To accomplish this, street medicine must be approached through charity and love, not justice.

How or why has this approach to patients experiencing homelessness caught on as a global movement? Street Medicine has caught on because it’s been spread through the joy of suffering and giving through charity. This has turned the light on in traditional healthcare institutions and practitioners. When you turn a light on in a room it doesn’t just shine on the ones you love best, not just our patients, but shines on all in the room, like our colleagues and friends in the community.

Street medicine, at its core, is the light that it gives us permission to share the sufferings of our patients with joy, through charity, with the purpose of healing spiritual, emotional and bodily suffering.

~ Brett Feldman