Healing People, Not Patients

Can spirituality bring the soul back to mental healthcare?

In Episode 3 of Healing People, Not Patients, Shelley Karrel, discusses integrating spirituality into mental health practice. Drawing from her doctoral research and 20 years of Mussar practice, she explores barriers clinicians face—lack of training, fear of boundaries, and ethical concerns—and how Mussar’s focus on character traits like humility and patience can create meaningful patient connections. Shelley offers practical ways to see patients as “holy souls,” fostering healing through curiosity and compassion.

Top 3 Takeaways:

• Barriers to Spirituality: Clinicians often lack training and personal spiritual awareness, fearing ethical or competency issues when addressing patients’ spiritual needs.
• Mussar in Practice: The Jewish practice of Mussar helps clinicians balance traits like humility and patience, transforming interactions by fostering curiosity over judgment.
• Healing Through Connection: Seeing patients as “holy souls” encourages clinicians to build authentic relationships, prioritizing patients’ values and meaning over technical fixes.

About the Guest:

Shelley Karrel is a registered clinical counselor in Vancouver, BC, with a Master’s in Counseling from City University of Seattle and a PhD candidate at Yorkville University, researching barriers to integrating spirituality in psychotherapy. With 30 years of counseling experience and 20 years practicing Mussar, she helps clients balance character traits to align with their soul’s purpose.

🔗 Connect with Shelley Karrel:

🌐 Website: Karrelcounselling.com

📘 Blog: “Your Spiritual Curriculum is Calling” on Karrelcounselling.com

📚 Recommended Reading: Everyday Holiness and With Heart in Mind by Alan Morinis

Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.

"Our theme song, "Room for the Soul," is available on Bandcamp at https://jonathanweinkle.bandcamp.com/track/room-for-the-soul."

Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on  patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.

He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.

🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a

📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen

📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle

The Healing People, Not Patients Podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or professional advice. Always consult qualified professionals regarding your personal or organizational decisions.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How can healthcare providers become allies in addiction recovery?

In this episode of Healing People, Not Patients, Rabbi Joshua Corber, explores addiction as a response to life’s unmanageable stresses, not just substance misuse. Drawing from his recovery journey and the 12-step program, he highlights the transformative role of a sponsor and the importance of addressing psychoemotional pain. Rabbi Corber offers healthcare providers practical ways to shift from focusing on stopping substance use to fostering a desire for a meaningful, sober life, inspired by Jewish teachings and community support.

Top 3 Takeaways:

• Addiction as a Symptom: Addiction often stems from an unmanageable life, not just substance misuse. Rabbi Corber emphasizes that the 12 steps address life’s broader challenges, helping patients find purpose beyond sobriety.
• The Power of a Sponsor: A sponsor, having walked the recovery path, offers unique support that therapy alone may not provide, guiding patients through life’s stresses with shared experience.
• Reframing the Conversation: Healthcare providers can move beyond prescribing sobriety to cultivating a desire for a manageable, fulfilling life, reducing stigma and supporting lasting recovery.

About the Guest:

Rabbi Joshua Corber, a graduate of the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, is the director of Jewish Addiction Community Services at Jewish Family Services in Vancouver, BC. A former congregational rabbi, he now supports individuals with substance use disorders, drawing on his recovery experience and the 12-step program to guide others toward a manageable, fulfilling life.

🔗 Connect with Rabbi Joshua Corber:

• 🌐 Website: jacsvancouver.com
• 📸 Instagram: @alcoholic_rabbi

Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.

"Our theme song, "Room for the Soul," is available on Bandcamp at https://jonathanweinkle.bandcamp.com/track/room-for-the-soul."

Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on  patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.

He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.

🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a

📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen

📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle

The Healing People, Not Patients Podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or professional advice. Always consult qualified professionals regarding your personal or organizational decisions.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if medicine has become a religion, and what does that mean for physicians and patients?

In the premiere episode of Healing People, Not Patients, Dr. Elisha Waldman, joins Dr. Jonathan Weinkle to discuss how medicine mirrors religious systems with its temples, hierarchies, and rituals. Drawing from his book This Narrow Space and his diverse experiences in the US, Israel, and the UK, Dr. Waldman unpacks the values and pitfalls of this structure. He shares how rituals like handwashing or structured diagnoses can ground providers but also risk disconnecting them from patients’ deeper hopes, fears, and values. Through stories of his palliative care work, he offers a path to expand the “narrow space” of illness, fostering connection and meaning.

This episode is a must-listen for physicians seeking to bring soul back into their practice.

• Medicine as a Religious System: Dr. Waldman compares medicine’s hierarchies, sacred spaces, and rituals—like handwashing or differential diagnoses—to religious practices, offering security but sometimes limiting deeper patient connection.
• Expanding the Narrow Space: In palliative care, Dr. Waldman focuses on patients’ hopes, fears, and values, creating space for meaningful conversations that guide care, rather than rushing to fix or flee from discomfort.
• Spirituality in Healthcare: Through the Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum, clinicians learn to engage with patients’ spiritual needs, moving beyond demographics to foster wholehearted practice.

Dr. Elisha Waldman is a pediatric palliative care doctor and oncologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London. With a BA in religious studies, he sees medicine as a religion with rituals and hierarchies. Author of This Narrow Space (2019), he draws from experiences in the US, Israel, and UK to explore healthcare’s human side. As faculty for the George Washington Institute’s Interprofessional Spiritual Care Education Curriculum, he trains clinicians to engage patients’ hopes, fears, and values, fostering meaningful care.

Connect with Dr. Elisha Waldman:

Email:  

[email protected]

[email protected]

Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.

Our theme song, "Room for the Soul," is available on Bandcamp at https://jonathanweinkle.bandcamp.com/track/room-for-the-soul.

Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on  patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.

He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.

🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a

📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen

📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle

The Healing People, Not Patients Podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or professional advice. Always consult qualified professionals regarding your personal or organizational decisions.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Medicine was never supposed to be just about diagnoses, lab values, or billing codes. For Dr. Jonathan Weinkle, it began with a deep belief: every human being is created in the image of God.

In this opening teaser, Dr. Weinkle shares his story—from the joy of healing relationships to the heartbreak of burnout—and why he created Healing People, Not Patients. He explains how the show will use the framework of the Passover Seder’s four questions to explore today’s most vexing problems in healthcare.

With episodes dropping weekly, the show invites listeners to rethink medicine not as a system of transactions, but as a sacred calling to restore soul, purpose, and humanity.

This teaser sets the stage: a journey from burnout to being on fire, from depersonalization to healing.

• Medicine’s Soul is at Stake: Healthcare often treats both patients and professionals as commodities—leaving many burned out or disconnected.
• The Four Questions Framework: Each episode will echo the Passover Seder, asking: What makes this moment different? How can medicine be transformed?
• A Call to Change the Ending: Instead of watching colleagues leave medicine or lose their spark, we can create a new narrative—one where healing extends to patients and providers.

Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.

Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on  patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.

He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.

🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a

📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen

📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle

The Healing People, Not Patients Podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or professional advice. Always consult qualified professionals regarding your personal or organizational decisions.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.