Even in the age of medical miracles, there is still no intervention more powerful than a genuine human connection. There is no lab, no scan, no test, no drug, no surgery, that can replace it. For the soul heals not by human medicine, but human kindness.

Medical student Ross Perry reflects on the most important lesson he learned while caring for a very special patient during his third year of medical school.

This essay placed first in the 2021 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest and was published in the December 2021 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.