ABOUT THIS EVENT:
While the late medical sociologist Charles Bosk rightly observed that residency was fundamentally “a moral education,” modern graduate medical training has too often narrowed its focus to efficiency, throughput and technical mastery. But without deliberate attention to the moral formation of trainees, how can we hope to cultivate clinicians whose professional identity can withstand the environmental hazards of commercialized medicine? Dr. Ryan Antiel confronts this question head-on. In this talk, he explores why virtue, character and the habits of moral perception are essential — not optional — in shaping physicians who can care wisely and humanely for the most vulnerable.

Dr. Antiel will present one such effort underway at Duke University: The Good Surgeon. Drawing on strategies from the Oxford Leadership Initiative, this project seeks to counter professional corrosion by forming a parallel community rooted in friendship, mutual accountability and honest inquiry. Within this space, difficult questions are raised, new practices are tested and the seeds of durable professional identity are cultivated. It is an experiment in rebuilding moral architecture from the inside out.

Dr. Antiel is a pediatric surgeon and medical ethicist at Duke University, where he serves on the faculty of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. His research combines empirical approaches from the fields of epidemiology, decision-making sciences and child outcomes with conceptual work grounded in moral philosophy and theology. He applies these approaches to address ethical challenges surrounding the care of seriously ill fetuses and neonates.  He is also interested in how surgical residency shapes the character of surgeons-in-training and how best to form the virtues of character necessary for good surgical practice.

You can check out his work in leading medical journals like JAMA Surgery and NEJM. We are excited to hear his thoughts on cultivating moral resilience and professional integrity in modern medicine.