“Medicine has lost its way because it lacks clarity about where the way should lead. We no longer have a shared public understanding of what medicine is for, of what the end of medicine is or should be.”

In The Way of Medicine, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen offer a teleological approach to medicine. They consider the good toward which medicine aims and place this good within a framework of human flourishing and traditional understands of the vocation of physician. They contrast the way of medicine to the provider services model, while acknowledging that the lived experiences of physicians do not fall neatly into one framework or another. In the process, they discuss how the way of medicine provides an antidote to physician burnout, and consider how it positions physicians to deal with some of the most pressing ethical issues of the day. While not every reader will agree with all their conclusions, The Way of Medicine is a thoughtful and important discussion of the practice and purpose of medicine.