The mission of AAMP is to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among medical professionals – physicians, nurses, healthcare administrators, scientists, and students – with the aim of building a culture that affirms the dignity of the human person in medical practice.
AAMP will carry out its mission first of all by taking on the planning and organizing the annual MedConference, which started in 2009. The aim of the MedConference is to rebuild a healthcare system characterized by cutting-edge scientific and clinical research along with attention to the totality of the needs of the sick person. Our hope and goal is to restore a more human approach to each patient’s care to improve medical care. This conference is an educational opportunity for students and all healthcare professionals to re-awaken and refresh the ideals that originally led them to embrace the medical profession and, therefore, to deepen their humanity as they carry out their medical practice.
By means of panel discussions, conferences, lectures, seminars, and other scientific events, AAMP would like to provide a meeting place where healthcare professionals can come to dialogue and gain professional credits to rebuild person-oriented health care.
The American Association of Medicine and the Person (AAMP) was established on May 10, 2011, as a (501)(c)(3) not-for-profit public benefit corporation according to the laws of the State of New York.
Hospital, Codice Squarcialupi, XV century; Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, Italy
To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always
At the very beginning, the scope of medical art was substantially ‘to comfort’ patients.
However, even today, in a very technological era, when many illnesses can be cured and pain easily relieved, when an organ transplant is a real option, even today, our patients need to be ‘comforted.’
They need ‘comfort’ to face the reality of a clear diagnosis, to endure the side effects of the treatments, to continue to hope, and, in short, to live the time of the sickness as a meaningful time.
It is interesting that the word comfort derives from the Latin root ‘cum -fortis.’ The meaning of this word is suggestive of a relationship (cum = together; fortis = strong) through which the person can acquire strength. This terminology fits perfectly within the relationship between caregiver and patient.