Healing People, Not Patients

Welcome to Healing People, Not Patients, hosted by Dr. Jonathan Weinkle, MD, FAAP, FACP. A primary care physician and teacher deeply grounded in Jewish wisdom, Dr. Weinkle invites listeners to explore medicine not as a business transaction but as a sacred calling.This show shines a light on the fractured healthcare system and offers stories, reflections, and conversations that reconnect doctors with the heart of healing—body, mind, and spirit. Through solo episodes, expert interviews, and even original music, you’ll gain inspiration and practical guidance to navigate burnout, rediscover joy, and reclaim purpose in medicine.Whether you’re a physician, healthcare professional, chaplain, or simply someone who longs for a more compassionate and humane approach to care, this podcast will help you find meaning in the practice of healing.

Healing People, Not Patients is a health podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 23 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Healing People, Not Patients, a health show with 23 episodes published.

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  Episode #23

  How Not to Lose Faith in Medicine | Ep23

  Sep 30, 202624 min

  This episode is sponsored by NURP NURP helps busy physicians grow their wealth through AI-powered algorithmic trading designed for demanding careers. No day trading, no guesswork, and no constant market watching required.  Ready to put your money to work? Visit start.nurp.com/doctors  to learn more.  Trading involves risk, and results may vary. This is not financial advice. —-------------------------- What happens when we expect medicine to give us certainty in a world that can never guarantee it?  In this solo episode of Healing People, Not Patients , Dr. Jonathan Weinkle  draws on Ecclesiastes, Jewish thought, literature, and clinical experience, to examine why medicine can create its own crises of faith when patients and clinicians mistake risk reduction for promises of good health. The conversation explores the limits of prevention, the danger of turning medical recommendations into moral judgments, and how unexpected outcomes can cause patients to lose trust in medicine. From vaccines and chronic illness to treatment side effects and unanswered suffering, the episode challenges healthcare professionals to embrace humility while continuing to make meaningful differences in patients’ lives. Ultimately, medicine is not about immortality. It is about gently nudging life toward better outcomes while recognizing uncertainty. The episode also highlights one of the most powerful tools available to healing professionals: human connection. Being present, building relationships, and helping patients reconnect with their communities may be just as important as the treatments we prescribe. Top 3 Takeaways Medicine was never about certainty or immortality: Risk factors change odds; they do not guarantee outcomes. Over promising turns recommendations into moral tests and breeds the same loss of faith Acher experienced when the promised long life failed to appear. Hevel is breath fragile, shallow, and all we have: The task is not to eliminate the evil days but to lengthen and enrich the time while they “come not,” gently, without blowing the breath away through over treatment or isolation. Presence and relationship are powerful medicine. “Two are better than one.” Strong, meaningful connections including with clinicians who simply show up may matter more for flourishing than many of the interventions we prescribe. Community is even better. Episode Mentioned Episode 11: Dwelling in the 'Who Knows' - Chaplaincy in Crisis  About The Show 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 ." About the Host: 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.

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  Episode #22

  The Imposter Phenomenon: Reframing Self-Doubt as Humility in Medicine | Ep22

  Sep 15, 202653 min

  This episode is sponsored by NURP NURP helps busy physicians grow their wealth through AI-powered algorithmic trading designed for demanding careers. No day trading, no guesswork, and no constant market watching required.  Ready to put your money to work? Visit start.nurp.com/doctors  to learn more.  Trading involves risk, and results may vary. This is not financial advice. —-------------------------- What if the relentless self-doubt felt by high-achieving physicians is not a personal pathology or “syndrome,” but a near-universal signal of humility in a demanding profession that constantly pushes people to the edge of their competence? In this episode, Dr. Jonathan Weinkle speaks with Dr. Phifer Nicholson, a UCLA surgery resident, Duke School of Medicine graduate, and Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative alum. With colleagues Drs. Mary Brandt and Holland Kaplan, Nicholson co-authored a paper arguing that medicalizing the imposter phenomenon pathologizes an experience reported by 70–80 percent of trainees and attendings, highest of all in surgery, and shifts responsibility onto individuals rather than toxic systems. They reframe these feelings as a potentially virtuous acknowledgment of human limits, especially acute for women, physicians of color, and those lower in medical hierarchies. Drawing on mentor stories, morbidity-and-mortality culture, and Jewish concepts of teshuvah, Moses, and Zusha of Hanipol, the conversation shows how naming doubt honestly, in community, can replace isolation with growth and safer care for everyone. Top 3 Takeaways Normalize, Don’t Pathologize: Self-doubt is near-universal among competent high achievers working at the edge of their knowledge. Calling it a “syndrome” medicalizes a human response and shifts responsibility onto the individual instead of the culture. Humility Lives Between Arrogance and Humiliation: True humility recognizes both strengths and limits. Imposter feelings often signal healthy moral intuition that one is reaching the boundary of current skill, an asset, not a defect, when held in community. Vulnerability Creates Safer Systems: Senior faculty who candidly share near-misses, lawsuits, and doubts normalize the experience. This modeling, plus honest evaluation of actual competence, reduces isolation and improves patient safety   About the Show: 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 ." About the Guest: Dr. Phifer Nicholson is a general surgery resident at UCLA and a graduate of Duke University School of Medicine and its Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative. With Drs. Mary Brandt and Holland Kaplan he co-authored a paper in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery reframing imposter syndrome as a near-universal phenomenon rather than a pathology, advocating for humility, community, and systemic change in surgical training. About the Host: 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.

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  Episode #21

  The Danger of “Moving On” : Judith Helfand on Disenfranchised Grief in a Post-Pandemic World | Ep21

  Sep 1, 20261h 27m

  This episode is sponsored by NURP NURP helps busy physicians grow their wealth through AI-powered algorithmic trading designed for demanding careers. No day trading, no guesswork, and no constant market watching required.  Ready to put your money to work? Visit start.nurp.com/doctors  to learn more.  Trading involves risk, and results may vary. This is not financial advice. —-------------------------- What happens when a young woman discovers she is a “DES daughter,” develops a rare cancer, loses the ability to carry a biological child, and decides to put her own life and family under the camera? And what does it mean when, decades later, a hidden photograph and a COVID-era Zoom shiva unlock a century-old family silence around a 12-year-old girl who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic? In this episode of Healing People, Not Patients , Dr. Jonathan Weinkle sits down with Judith (“Judy”) Helfand, the filmmaker behind the Peabody Award-winning A Healthy Baby Girl , the “toxic comedy” Blue Vinyl , Love & Stuff , and the in-progress multiformat project Good Mourning Ethel . Helfand traces how her mother’s use of diethylstilbestrol (DES), the subsequent diagnosis of clear cell adenocarcinoma, radical surgery, and the fraught mother-daughter relationship became both a personal crisis and the foundation of her documentary practice. She describes volunteering for a DES film only to become its subject, the decision to film her own recovery and family dynamics, and the rituals (kaddish, mikvah, invented grief ceremonies) she created when conventional mourning structures did not fit the loss of fertility and “unborn children.” The conversation then pivots to her current work: recovering the almost-erased memory of her aunt Ethel, who died at age 12 in the 1918 flu epidemic in their New York tenement. Helfand explores how quarantine, the absence of shiva, wartime and later historical silences, and a grandmother’s protective isolation turned private catastrophe into “Bubbe’s meshugas.” She connects that unresolved grief to patterns still visible in families after COVID, and argues that personal, intimate storytelling is one of the few ways humans can hold large-scale historical trauma without reducing it to statistics. Throughout, Helfand and Weinkle discuss the ethics of the camera in the sickroom, the difference between being “visited with” and being processed, the power of a clinician simply allowing themselves to be sad with a patient, and the Reconstructionist Jewish insight that every ritual was once new. The episode offers clinicians a vivid model of how personal narrative, ritual creativity, and the refusal to let grief be minimized can deepen presence and care. Top 3 Takeaways Presence Before Protocols (and Permission to Be Sad): Patients remember the clinician who can look at loss (empty pelvis, missing organs, erased family members) and say “this is not normal; I’m angry and sad with you” rather than offering the language of “normal tissue.” Small acts of shared emotion and attentiveness make medical care more potent. Personal Story as Antidote to Statistical Forgetting: One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. The only way to reclaim the millions (whether DES-exposed daughters, 1918 flu victims, or COVID losses) is for individuals to remember and tell one specific story fully. Intimate documentary and family storytelling keep the human scale alive. It’s Never Too Late to Turn a Bad Mourning Good: Unresolved grief does not have an expiration date. Creating new or adapted rituals, recovering erased names and photographs, and giving public voice to private silences can still transform isolation into blessing, even a century later, and offers a model for families still navigating COVID-era incomplete mourning.   About the Show 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 ."   About the Guest Judith Helfand is a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker, organizer, and educator known for her open hearted, radically transparent approach to nonfiction storytelling. Her films include the autobiographical A Healthy Baby Girl (1997, POV/Sundance) about her DES exposure, clear-cell adenocarcinoma, hysterectomy, and family dynamics; the Sundance Award-winning “toxic comedy” Blue Vinyl (2002, HBO) on polyvinyl chloride; Love & Stuff (2022, POV); and the forthcoming multiformat project Good Mourning Ethel , which recovers the story of her aunt who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic and the multigenerational silence that followed. She co-founded Working Films and Chicken & Egg Pictures and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Connect with Judith https://www.documentaries.org/films/good-mourning-ethel/ to see the trailer and contribute to making the film https://www.bluevinyl.org/ https://chickeneggfilms.org/ https://workingfilms.org/ https://www.pbs.org/pov/films/ahealthybabygirl/ About the Host 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.

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  Episode #20

  Whole Person Care in Rheumatology: Listening Beyond the Labs | HPNP | EP20

  Aug 17, 202655 min

  This episode is sponsored by NURP NURP helps busy physicians grow their wealth through AI-powered algorithmic trading designed for demanding careers. No day trading, no guesswork, and no constant market watching required. Ready to put your money to work? Visit start.nurp.com/doctors to learn more. Trading involves risk, and results may vary. This is not financial advice. _______________________________ In this episode of Healing People, Not Patients , Dr. Jonathan Weinkle interviews board-certified rheumatologist Dr. Brittany Panico about shifting from “survival mode” and checklist-driven care to a more patient-centered approach. Brittany shares how listening deeply, observing body language, and building relationships transformed her practice. They discuss rheumatology’s diagnostic challenges, including patients who don’t fit formal criteria, gout with normal uric acid, the value of serial labs, and collaboration across specialties. Brittany also explains how osteopathic training and systems thinking shaped her approach to medicine and leadership. Top 3 Takeaways Believe the narrative first. Objective findings matter, but patients who have been disbelieved often hide or minimize symptoms. Slowing down, asking “tell me more,” and decoding their language (pain vs. stiffness, flare vs. sleep deprivation) builds trust and often reveals the real problem. Criteria are research tools, not bedside walls. Many patients fall into diagnostic gaps. Persistence, serial testing, early empiric treatment within safe limits, and coaching patients to advocate for themselves can close those gaps without waiting for textbook presentations. Relationship and follow-through scale. Whether in a 15-minute check-in or leading a team, the habits of presence, clear communication of goals, and rapid feedback loops (“call them in two weeks, not three months”) turn isolated visits into ongoing care. About the Show 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." About the Guest Dr. Brittany Panico is a board-certified rheumatologist. She completed residency and fellowship in Chicago and has practiced academic and private-practice rheumatology in Phoenix, caring for the full spectrum of inpatient and outpatient autoimmune and musculoskeletal disease. She is a DO whose training emphasized problem based learning, osteopathic manipulative medicine, and systems thinking. She is active on social media advocating for whole-person, narrative-centered care. Connect with the Guest Website: drbrittanypenico.com LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube: Dr. Brittany Panico / Brittany Panico DO About the Host 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.

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  Episode #19

  Bikur Cholim: Visiting the Sick, Community Care & Patient-Centered Support | EP19

  Aug 3, 202651 min

  This episode is sponsored by NURP NURP helps busy physicians grow their wealth through AI-powered algorithmic trading designed for demanding careers. No day trading, no guesswork, and no constant market watching required. Ready to put your money to work? Visit start.nurp.com/doctors to learn more. Trading involves risk, and results may vary. This is not financial advice. —-------------------------- What does true bikur cholim , visiting the sick, look like beyond a quick hospital drop-in, and how can ordinary people (and clinicians) turn personal hardship into structured, compassionate support? In this episode of Healing People, Not Patients , Dr. Jonathan Weinkle welcomes Dr. Nina Butler, holder of doctorates in special education and educational administration/policy, former school principal, nonprofit veteran, and the driving force behind Bikur Cholim of Pittsburgh (also known as Friends of Jewish Patients). Nina shares how her family’s multi-generational tradition of hosting transplant patients, combined with two decades of intensive hospital experience with her late son Mikey (who lived with cystic fibrosis and later received a double lung transplant), led her to formalize a 501(c)(3) volunteer network that now supports hundreds of patients from around the block and around the world. They discuss pre-arrival Zoom intakes that turn terror into the feeling of having family nearby; coordinating meals, grocery runs, “Person of the Day” helpers, Shabbat cabinets, accommodations, and highly individualized needs (down to white vs. dark meat or gluten-free preferences) via tools like Lots of Helping Hands and WhatsApp; advocacy with hospital systems on kosher (and now interfaith) dietary and spiritual needs; collaboration with the Muslim community at Children’s Hospital; and the transferable model of grassroots community infrastructure. Nina also offers concrete, low-tech practices clinicians can use to build trust and presence before any clinical agenda, language access, team transparency, primary nursing continuity, open-ended attentiveness to what this patient actually needs, and partnership with community support systems that extend far beyond the hospital stay. The conversation highlights patient-centered care in its fullest sense: ordinary people acting in extraordinary ways, and the power of connection against isolation and loneliness. Top 3 Takeaways: Presence Before Protocols: Clinicians can create a sense of being “visited with” rather than processed by starting with connection, clear language access, explaining the care team, asking what the patient actually needs (not just delivering a list), and recognizing that small acts of presence (or coordinating community presence) make medical care more potent. Coordinated, Patient-Directed Support Beats Generic Kindness: Well-meaning offers of “anything you need,” flowers, and duplicate soups often miss the mark. Structured systems (Person of the Day, detailed meal coordination, pre-arrival orientation) let loved ones and volunteers meet real, nuanced needs while preserving privacy and dignity. Community Infrastructure Is Transferable: Geographic and religious cohesion helps, but the model, WhatsApp/listserv coordination, one clear intake point, shared tools like Lots of Helping Hands, and willingness to partner across communities, can grow from a single congregation or neighborhood outward. Nina actively offers to help other groups start. About the Show: 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." About the Guest: Dr. Nina Butler holds doctorates in special education and educational administration/education policy. A former school principal and longtime nonprofit leader, she is the face and organizer of Bikur Cholim of Pittsburgh / Friends of Jewish Patients, a 501(c)(3) volunteer network that provides material, logistical, and spiritual support to patients and families receiving medical care in Pittsburgh, whether they live nearby or travel from across the country or the world. She draws on personal experience navigating prolonged illness and hospitalization with her late son Mikey, as well as a multi-generational family tradition of hospitality and care. Connect with the Guest / Organization Website: https://www.bikurcholimofpittsburgh.org/ About the Host: 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.

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