Healthcare Symposium: Caring for the Whole Person in a Technological Age

Friday & Saturday, August 7–8, 2026—Early bird registration for the 3rd Annual Healthcare Symposium with keynote speaker Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, MD, PhD (Georgetown University) is open through June 15.

The Healthcare Symposium is an annual two-day conference hosted by the Healthcare Initiative at Anselm House. The Symposium brings together Christian students, faculty, and providers across the Upper Midwest to examine questions that modern, technological medicine sets aside: What does it mean to care for a whole person? How does Christian faith and vocation meet at the bedside? And how do we sustain our humanity in healing work over an entire career? CME credits will be available.

Abstract

Modern healthcare emphasizes a clinician’s diligent and competent technical prowess. Modern medicine was profoundly formed in the context of 20th century modernity and a mentality that sociologist Jacque Elull called “A Technological Age.” Everything about modern healthcare now revolves around technology in service of efficiency. Yet, few clinicians entered healthcare to fill check boxes or produce widgets. And yet to survive many clinicians feel they have to abandon the deeper interpersonal and existential reasons that brought them to caring work.

Older wisdom suggests humans are not just brains attached to machines weighing their options and optimizing their preferences. They are whole beings, whole persons with intrinsic worth worthy of care as children of God. If healthcare work is a whole person business, it must recover or reawaken embodied presence and attunement to another’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs as the basis for that work. What may once have been taken for granted before modern medicine’s genesis, must now be reclaimed, articulated, defended, and practiced ideally counterformative community, shaping a clinician’s thinking (head), acting (hands), as well as in their emotions and desires (heart) over an entire career.

This two-day healthcare symposium will explore what it means to care for the whole person in the health professions including intellectual, practical, and attitudinal dimensions. Through engaging lectures, conversations, reading, reflection and fellowship, we will re-awaken and inspire clinicians for the head-heart-hands wholeness of healing work in the midst of dehumanizing forces in modern high-tech healthcare.

Endorsements

“I have been encouraged and stretched in my personal and professional life at the past two Anselm House Healthcare Symposia. They not only provided great content, but an opportunity to meet other healthcare professionals seeking to integrate their faith and professional lives, along with plenty of opportunity for discussion.” –Dr. Steve Bergeson, M.D., Chairman of the CMDA Twin Cities chapter.

“The Anselm House Healthcare Symposia have been amazing opportunities to meet with fellow Christians in healthcare, hear from thoughtful speakers on important topics, and spend time thinking about what it means to live the Christian life as a physician. I highly recommend attending to anyone interested in learning more about how their faith connects to their work in healthcare.” –Dr. Rick Lindsay, M.D., Ph.D., Endocrinology Fellow at Mayo Clinic in Rochester

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Guided by the work of physician, philosopher, and former Franciscan friar, Dr. Daniel Sulmasy we will think, read, discuss, commune together and meditate on the symposium’s theme from different dimensions returning participants to their busy professions with a fuller sense of God’s presence in the imperfect goodness of healthcare work.

The symposium is open to healthcare students, residents, and faculty from both the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, as well all healthcare professionals from across the Twin Cities, and the Upper Midwest.

20% off early bird registration is open from now until June 15.

CME credits will be available for physicians, dentists, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and mental health professionals.

Ticket Pricing:

Healthcare Students/Residents – $50 ($55.20 incl. fees)

UMN & Mayo Clinic Faculty and Staff – $150 ($161.90 incl. fees)

Other Healthcare Professionals – $250 ($268.61 incl. fees)

*Scholarship money is available. Please contact Phil Letizia for more information - [email protected].

Agenda & Schedule of Events

Friday, August 7th

1:30-2:00pm Arrival and Registration (Melrose Station)

2:00-2:15pm Welcome & Opening

2:15-3:45pm - Session 1 - Dr. Jon Tilburt - When Medicine Becomes Soul-Sucking: Burnout, Meaning, and the Crisis of Vocation

3:45-4:15pm Break

4:15-5:30pm - Breakout Sessions I - 50 Years Later: Henri Nouwen's The Wounded Healer, Dr. Jaime Konerman Sease (UMN) - Reading Jacques Ellul In The Context Of Medicine, Dr. C. Christopher Hook (Mayo Clinic)

5:30-6:30pm - Dinner (Melrose Station)

7:00-8:30pm - Session 2 - Keynote Lecture - Dr. Daniel Sulmasy (McNamara Alumni Center) - Dignity and the Care of the Sick

Saturday, August 8th

9:30-10:00am - Doors Open, Coffee Available (Melrose Station)

10:00-11:30am - Session 3 - Dr. Daniel Sulmasy (Melrose Station) - Is Health Care a Spiritual Discipline?

11:30 -12:30pm - Lunch (Melrose Station)

12:45-2:00pm - Breakout Sessions II - Liturgical Rhythms in Practice: Implications for building community, seeking retreat, and sustaining mission, Dr. Jack Lane (Mayo Clinic), Dr. Peter Daly (Summit Orthopedics, UMN), and Sara Foote - How should Christian clinicians think about clinical AI? Vocation, relation, responsibility, Dr. Evan Beacom (UMN)

2:00-2:15pm - Break

2:15-3:45pm - Session 4 - Dr. Daniel Sulmasy & Curatio Apostolate - "Healthcare in the Midst of Prayer: A Panel Discussion with Dr. Daniel Sulmasy and Curatio Apostolate”

3:45pm - Closing Remarks

Co-Sponsoring Organizations

The Healthcare Symposium is co-sponsored by the following organizations: Anselm House, Christian Medical and Dental Associations Twin Cities & Rochester chapters, Catholic Medical Association Twin Cities & Rochester chapters, Curatio Apostolate, Minnesota Catholic Conference, Minnesota Ethical Alliance for Healthcare.

Biography for Dr. Dan Sulmasy, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Sulmasy is Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and a Senior Research Scholar. Dr. Sulmasy holds a joint appointment at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. He is the inaugural André Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics, with co-appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Medicine at Georgetown. His research interests encompass both theoretical and empirical investigations of the ethics of end-of-life decision-making, ethics education, and spirituality in medicine. Read Dr. Sulmasy’s full bio.

“God comes into the midst of healthcare with all the immediacy of human encounters…God is in the healing, and the healing is in our relationship with God.” – Daniel P. Sulmasy, MD, PhD

The Healthcare Initiative at Anselm House

The Healthcare Initiative at Anselm House, led by Dr. Phil Letizia, PhD, seeks to grow healthcare students, faculty, and providers at the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic in wisdom and Christlikeness. This interdisciplinary network regularly gathers to network, learn from Christian sages in healthcare fields, and deeply contemplate the big questions that Christian healthcare providers face.

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