Greed versus Charity
Larry Birnbaum, PhD, FASEP, EPC
Department of Exercise Physiology
The College of St. Scholastica
Duluth, MN  55811

Greed is a human trait that has plagued humanity since the earliest years of our ancestors.  The current economic crisis is due at least partly to greed.  There is plenty of blame to go around, and I think most of us have to share some of that blame.  After all, are there any of us who do not live on credit, and how many Americans are living beyond their means hoping that their income somehow magically keeps up with their spending?  While I do not believe we can eliminate greed from the human psyche, I think we can control it, minimize it, and perhaps balance it.  The best way to control and minimize it is not necessarily with more government regulation.  While used in other contexts, the statement “You can’t regulate morality” may apply to some degree in this situation as well.  I say to some degree because if this statement is taken to the extreme, we would not have laws against murder and other devastating crimes.  That said, what is the best way to minimize greed?

I cannot say there is one best way, but I think a better way is to include ethics in the curricula of all professional programs, including health care fields such as exercise physiology.  Ethics does not have to be a separate course.  Components of ethics can be woven throughout the curriculum.  No doubt, some of those components are already there (e.g., patient confidentiality, respect for the dignity of others).  Perhaps they should receive greater emphasis and missing pieces added.  What can be added to minimize greed within our profession?  Discussions on selflessness would be a good place to start.  Some of our greatest role models have been incredibly selfless.  Realistically, we cannot expect our students or ourselves to be Mother Teresas, but we can use her example to guide us to a less selfish life. 

That brings me to the idea of balancing greed, which means doing things to lessen the effects of greed.  Charity can be considered the opposite of greed and is a way to counter greed.  Donating money to charitable causes is good in and of itself, but donating time is likely a more effective way to keep greed in check.  Imagine the impact if half the health care providers volunteered their services for a half day each week or even once a month, providing health care to those who cannot afford it.  A big step toward achieving that goal would be to require a certain number of volunteer hours for graduation from our health care programs.  By making it a requirement in our educational programs, it would be more apt to become a norm.  This is actually becoming fairly common, atlthough I do not think we have begun to tap into students as a community resource that could meet some of the community’s health care needs.  Obviously, students have to achieve certain competencies before we send them out into the community.

A population that could benefit greatly from exercise physiology students as well as practitioners is nursing home residents.  I do not wish to take any jobs away from exercise physiologists who are already making a living working with this population, but I think the need is so great that student volunteers will not lessen employment opportunities in that realm.  For that matter, internships could be set up where part of the student’s time is spent as a volunteer helping the underserved populations.

All of this is well and good, but of course, as educators we have to model ethical behavior.  Before I require students to volunteer, I had better put in some volunteer hours myself, ideally serving the same populations I would require my students to serve.  That would significantly improve the success rate of the volunteer piece of our educational program.  By success, I mean that our graduates would continue to volunteer their services as practitioners.

Volunteering will not eliminate greed or solve all our nation’s health care woes.  It will help meet the needs of those we serve, and it will help take the edge off greed.  And it benefits the volunteer, in that by volunteering, one becomes a better person.  He becomes more selfless, more ethical.  Accordingly, the inclusion of ethics and volunteering in our health care curricula should help reduce the adverse effects of greed in health care.  Hopefully, this will make health care more affordable and more accessible.