In December of 1899, Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson delivered an address to the Middlesex Hospital Medical Society in London on the relation between science and medicine. Commenting specifically on the future of medicine in the upcoming century, he criticized the gap between scientific research in academic settings and the practice of medicine in clinical settings. He ended by stating that “all depends on whether you accept the proposition I have submitted to you—namely, that the science of medicine, even more than the art, holds the promise of the future” (Burdon-Sanderson 1900, 255). Burdon-Sanderson’s proposition was actualized in the United States through the Flexner Report of 1910, which helped to universalize what medical education would come to look like in the country: the emphasis was placed squarely on science rather than art (Flexner 1910). While there are still gaps between clinical practice and scientific research, there is no doubt that modern medicine is scientific medicine. There is also no doubt that scientific medicine leads to better health outcomes (Duffin 2010). However, some have argued that the emphasis of medicine as a science has left the art of medicine behind to the detriment of modern medicine. Thomas Duffy, for instance, an internist at the Yale School of Medicine, states that the aftermath of the Flexner Report “created an excellence in science that was not balanced by a comparable excellence in clinical caring” (2011, 276). Indeed, at the onset of our current century, many called for a reinvestment in the art of medicine so as to balance the emphasis on science (The Commonwealth Fund 2002; Committee on the Roles of Academic Health Centers in the 21st Century 2003; Association of American Medical Colleges 2004). The burgeoning field of medical humanities—that is, the interdisciplinary field dedicated to demonstrating “how the arts and humanities inform and elevate the work of healing” (Campo 2005)—is evidence that such calls have been heard. While we surely want to celebrate scientific medicine, there are certain areas of medical practice where the art of medicine is as important, if not more important, as the science of medicine. We argue that one of those areas is the sphere of cancer care in which health professionals are asked not only to treat patients with cancer but also to help them navigate through what is oftentimes one of the scariest, most vulnerable, and suffering-ridden times of their lives. Using concepts from the phenomenological tradition, we aim to provide philosophical clarity to situations in the medical setting in which health professionals must treat the whole person, rather than simply the person’s body, in order to provide proper patient care, thus highlighting an element of the art of medicine. We end by providing three principles that we think can help guide phenomenologically-informed cancer care.

Phenomenology and medicine

Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field that includes the realms of philosophy, history, religion, art, and literature, among other disciplines. At its heart is an attempt to provide theories and concepts to bolster the art of medicine, which includes all the so-called “non-scientific” aspects of medical care such as forming an empathic relationship with the patient or practicing effective communication that is respectful of the patient’s situation, among a multitude of other aspects. Philosophy has been helpful in providing direction to the field of medical ethics. For instance, every professional organization in medicine has a code of ethics, and the principles set forth in those codes have been informed by philosophy. Recently, a new subdiscipline of philosophy has made an impact in medical humanities: phenomenology. Founded by Edmund Husserl in the early 1900s, phenomenology’s explicit goal is to get “to the things themselves!” [Zu den Sachen selbst] (Husserl 2001, 50), which means to describe things as they appear in context and not appeal to overly abstract theorizing. This practical bent, as well as the phenomenological attempt to understand the world of another, makes phenomenology a viable candidate for application in healthcare settings, particularly when it comes to providing empathetic clinical care. Dan Zahavi and Kristian Martiny do a good job of summarizing the role that phenomenology can play in such contexts:

Phenomenology can play a significant role in diagnosis, treatment, and therapy. Using phenomenology in a clinical context is not merely a question of being interested in the particular perspective of the patient. Part of the task is precisely to apply a mindset and a theoretical framework that will allow one to capture the fundamental structures of the changed life situation….How does the illness, disability, or disorder affect the subject’s relation to itself, to the world, and to others? (2019, 161)

Thus, the application of phenomenology in healthcare settings can take several directions, as it can inform clinical practice, guide empathetic care, and provide a theoretical framework to better understand a patient’s holistic situation.

A key conceptual distinction in phenomenology that is especially useful in healthcare settings is the distinction between what is called the corporeal body [Körper] and the lived body [Leib]. This distinction is made clear by Martin Heidegger, Husserl’s most famous student, in the Zollikon Seminars, a two-week long lecture series delivered to healthcare professionals annually from 1959 to 1969 with the aim of showing how phenomenological concepts can be used in medical settings. Throughout the lecture series, Heidegger repeatedly argues that the corporeal body is simply one’s body as an object. This aspect of the body can be objectified, measured, and treated in a healthcare context. However, there is another aspect of the body in which objectification would be inappropriate. This is what he calls the “lived body” and can be equated with one’s existence, which is typically the aspect of oneself with which one identifies. Heidegger explains this by pointing to a watch on a table and asserting that “the watch is on the table” to his audience. He states, “For those of us who are sitting here, the watch is obviously lying here on the table. How does the body participate in this assertion? The body participates by hearing and seeing. But does the body see? No. I see” (Heidegger 2001, 88). He goes on to explain that the lived body is who you are as a person, which is the aspect of your embodied self that experiences and understands the truth of the assertion, “the watch is on the table,” while your corporeal body is the aspect of your embodied self as a physical object, which is incapable of any such understanding. To put it plainly: the corporeal body senses, but only the lived body understands. This is why he states that “we do not ‘have’ a body; rather we ‘are’ bodily” (Heidegger 1979, 99). It is not as if I am my lived body and simply carry around my corporeal body; rather, both my lived body and my corporeal body are aspects of myself. Heidegger makes it clear that it is appropriate to objectify the corporeal body in healthcare settings, but the lived body is “nonobjectifiable” (2001, 232) and should thus not be treated as an object.

At the same time Heidegger was presenting his seminars in Zollikon, Michel Foucault was arguing that clinical practice in modern medicine led to health professionals objectifying patients’ bodies and ignoring their personhood. He stated that there has been a “minute but decisive change” in clinical practice in which the question, “what is the matter with you?” was been replaced by the question, “where does it hurt?” (Foucault 1975, xviii). While “what is the matter with you?” acknowledges you as a person or lived body and invites you to describe your situation holistically, “where does it hurt?” is specifically focused on physical pain linked to your corporeal body. This shift in clinical practice led to what Foucault (1975) calls “the medical gaze,” which, if framed using Heidegger’s language, is when the medical professional only attends to the corporeal body and disregards the lived body of the patient. Medical professionals who operate solely under the medical gaze may be able to provide accurate diagnoses and prognoses, but they do not seek to understand what matters to the patient as a lived body.

While he makes no mention of Heidegger or Foucault in his classic 1982 article, “The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine,” Eric Cassel provides an excellent explanation of why it is problematic to act as if only the corporeal body matters in a healthcare context. He argues that “it is not possible to treat sickness as something that happens solely to the body without thereby risking damage to the person” (1982, 640). Cassel’s analysis comes more from his experiences in the clinical setting than from the perspective of philosophy in general or phenomenology in particular. Our goal is to link his intuitions with a theoretical scaffolding, thereby adding philosophical depth. If we parse Cassel’s analysis in phenomenological terms, we can say that it is not possible to treat sickness as something that happens solely to the corporeal body without thereby risking damage to the lived body. To do so is to disrespect the fact that one’s bodily health is inextricably linked with one’s personal, holistic well-being and also to ignore the fact that persons typically more readily identify themselves with their lived bodies, rather than their corporeal bodies. Cassel provides a case study of a thirty-five-year-old woman with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy to illustrate. The treatment leaves her weak, in pain, nauseous, hairy in certain places but bald in others, fat, lacking libido, and depressed. Furthermore, not only was she in fear of what the future might hold for her and anxious as to whether she even had a future, but she was also unable to engage socially with her friends as she had in the past due to her depression; moreover, the physical pain rendered her unable to practice what she considered to be her life’s work—creating artistic sculptures.

In his analysis of this case, Cassel provides a helpful distinction by differentiating physical pain from suffering. Influenced by Cassel, Fredrik Svenaeus explains the difference as follows: “Many other things than physical pains can make a person suffer: to not get what you want, to get what you really do not want, to not become who you want to be, or to become who you really do not want to be” (2020, 336). This suggests a person can be suffering but not be in physical pain and also that a person can experience physical pain but not be suffering. I may, for instance, suffer when losing a loved one but feel no physical pain. On the other hand, I may test the limits of my physical body during training for, say, a weightlifting competition and experience physical pain in the process but not experience any suffering. In the case Cassel presents, the patient is clearly in physical pain, but she is also suffering in that she is not able to be the person she wants to be or do the things she finds most meaningful in her life. Generally speaking, suffering has to do with a perceived threat to the integrity of one’s lived body. We therefore should understand that while there may be a link between physical pain in the corporeal body and suffering of the lived body, suffering itself is a much broader category than physical pain. If medical professionals only focus on the physical pain or dysfunction of the corporeal body and do not acknowledge and empathically respond to the suffering of the lived body, they are falling prey to the medical gaze and thus not properly caring for their patients.

I-It and I-Thou

Which concepts from the phenomenological tradition can help medical professionals care for the whole person, as opposed to merely the body, and therefore practice the art of medicine? Which spheres of medical practice would best benefit from phenomenologically-informed care? These two questions are linked, and the answers to each are therefore contingent upon each other, especially given the practical bent to phenomenology and the general insistence on the part of phenomenologists that situations are contextual in nature. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus in on health professionals who provide care to patients undergoing cancer treatment, since we think that this particular situation calls for an intentional approach to the art of medicine. We begin by utilizing Martin Buber’s I-Thou relationship as an appropriate starting point to avoid the medical gaze and then present examples as to what cancer care might look like that not only appropriately cares for the patient’s corporeal body but also her lived body.

In his 1923 work, I and Thou, Buber tries to show that there are two modes of relating to the world and others: the I-It relation and the I-Thou relation. Beginning with the I-It relation, Buber states, “The man who has acquired an I and says I-It assumes a position before things but does not confront them in the current of reciprocity” (1970, 80). The I-It relation allows the I to approach the other as an object that can be measured and manipulated. When a medical professional performs diagnostic imaging, for instance, he or she is treating the patient’s corporeal body as an object in this fashion. There is nothing problematic about the I-It relation in and of itself, but if this is the only way we related to one another, it would lead to alienation wherein we do not acknowledge each other’s ability to engage reciprocally with one another (Buber 1970, 111). Kevin Aho puts the point the following way: “Buber does not regard the I-it attitude as evil …. The problem is that, in the modern age, this attitude has come to dominate and block out any other way of relating to others” (2020, 125). To stave off alienation, Buber argues that we must enter into the I-Thou relation in which “I enter into a direct relationship [with another] …. The relationship is at once being chosen and choosing, passive and active” (1970, 124). In the I-Thou relationship, I do not relate to the other as an object to be manipulated but rather am open to the ways in which the other unique individual presents him or herself to me. Ideally, there is a reciprocity involved in the I-Thou relationship that simply does not exist in the I-It relationship: I am open to you, and you are open to me. In a healthcare context, when the health professional asks the patient the Foucauldian question formerly common in clinical settings—i.e., “what’s the matter with you?”—in a mode of genuine and active engagement, he or she is entering the I-Thou relation.

Importantly, Buber makes it clear that the level of precision we have come to expect in the I-It relationship can never be found in the I-Thou relationship (1970, 81). We can therefore have a science of the corporeal body and come to understand the way in which it functions, how to maintain its functioning, and how to diagnose the reasons for any dysfunction in order to restore its functioning. Such is the realm of the science of medicine. However, because all persons are unique, it is simply impossible to have a science of the lived body. Buber puts the point the following way: “The It-world hangs together in space and time. The Thou-world does not” (1970, 84). In the lived body lie one’s hopes, goals, fears, desires, meanings, and strivings, along with everything else that matters to an individual. These are utterly unique to an individual and thus cannot be exhaustively coordinated in a scientific fashion. Thus, to care for the lived body, rather than merely the corporeal body, one has to enter the art of medicine.

Phenomenologically-informed cancer care

Now that we understand the basic distinction between the I-It and I-Thou relations, we can fix our attention on cancer care wherein the art of medicine is crucially important. When approached from the perspective of the body, we can understand cancer as a general term that is applied when an abnormal cell growth occurs somewhere in the body and has the potential to spread to other parts of the body. From the perspective of the lived body, cancer is a far more complex term. Kathryn Robb and her colleagues sum up the general perception of cancer as follows: “Cancer has long been one of the most feared diseases, widely regarded as synonymous with a death sentence. Even the word ‘cancer’ can evoke an almost visceral response of dread resulting in euphemisms like the ‘Big C’” (Robb et al. 2014, 1). Although advances in modern medicine have put many of us in a situation wherein many cancer diagnoses are not death sentences per se, cancer still has this stigma attached to it, which has important implications on the part of the lived body.

One concept from the phenomenological tradition that is helpful when a patient has been diagnosed with cancer is the idea of a changed life situation, which we can understand through a Heideggerian lens. Heidegger argues that one of the primary ways in which we understand our lives is through possibilities. He states, “As long as we exist, we always understand ourselves and always will understand ourselves in terms of possibilities” (1962, 185). Although the horizon of our possibilities is not limitless, these possibilities tend to show themselves as open-ended when we are healthy. One can, for instance, embark upon a career as a professor, start a family, take on the task of writing a book, or take up a new hobby. From a phenomenological perspective, “the boundaries of my horizon begin to contract and close in” (Aho 2018, xviii) when diagnosed with cancer. All of a sudden, the horizon no longer shows up as open-ended but rather as limited, which we can refer to as a changed life situation. This changed life situation leads to uncertainty: a person may wonder whether he or she will survive the cancer and be able to continue life’s projects, what type of pain and suffering will be endured as a result of not only the cancer but also the treatment, what level of independence will be lost, or what types of disruptions the cancer may pose to one’s family, work, and social life (Tran et al. 2019). The uncertainty itself can lead to fear and suffering in that the person may perceive that his or her bodily integrity is in jeopardy.

A recent study has shown that the most important determinant of patient satisfaction in cancer care settings is the strength of the relationship between medical professionals and the patient (Familietti et al. 2013). We believe medical professionals must practice the art of medicine in order to form strong relationships with patients, which entails not only attending to the corporeal bodies of patients but also their lived bodies; not only understanding what matters to the patient, but also how the changed life situation may have altered the horizon of possibilities for the patient’s life. Using Buber’s language of I-It and I-Thou, we provide three hypothetical situations in cancer care settings in which phenomenologically-informed care can strengthen the relationship between medical professionals and patients. Importantly, each situation is unique in regard to the perceived changed life situation on the part of the patient, and the medical professional’s ability to understand the patient’s perspective plays a role in regard to treatment and overall health outcomes. The three examples provide us with exemplars from which we can create principles to guide phenomenologically-informed cancer care, which will be discussed in the next section.

First, consider the case of a highly social and fun-loving patient with laryngeal cancer who must undergo a full laryngectomy in order to remove the cancerous tumor, meaning the person will be left without a voice box. A medical professional ensconced in the medical gaze and thereby only engaging in the I-It relationship would explain that the way to properly remove the tumor is to remove the larynx, educate the patient as to the location and function of the larynx, and talk through the details of the procedure as well as the changed anatomy of the patient after the procedure. A medical professional who practices phenomenologically-informed care would recognize that he or she should prioritize the I-Thou relationship over the I-It relationship initially in this context since the operation will likely be a life-changing event for the patient. This would entail engaging in open dialogues with the patient to get to know the patient’s values and talking through the ways in which the procedure will lead to a changed life situation. It will also include a conversation of the ways in which the medical professional can help the patient understand how to navigate the contracted horizon of possibilities due to the surgery, recognizing that post-operative treatments in this sphere may entail up to thirty appointments, which means that the medical professional and the patient will spend a lot of time together. This may include sharing information as to what techniques worked with earlier patients in a similar context, as well as talking through what is unique to this particular patient’s situation to see if previously proven techniques may prove useful. For instance, if the medical professional had a patient in the past with a similar personality who underwent the procedure and found success in writing jokes on a white board to start each post-operative radiation therapy treatment session in order to lighten the mood, that may be shared with this patient to better approach the post-operative clinical setting. The medical professional should also share the ways in which the patient will be able to communicate after going through therapy so that the patient understands that the removal of the voice box does not mean communication is altogether impossible, thereby aiding in alleviating some of the uncertainty that the patient is facing, especially given the patient’s highly social nature. These conversations that take place in the I-Thou should ideally happen before engaging in the I-It sorts of informational communications that clearly also need to take place before the surgery itself.

Second, consider the case of a conservative Catholic elderly woman with vaginal cancer who needs to undergo surgery to remove the tumors and lesions on the surface of her vagina. A medical professional operating in the I-It relation will explain the reasons as to why the cancerous cells need to be removed, what precisely the procedure entails, as well as the importance of skin care afterwards. A phenomenologically-informed medical professional would recognize that this region of the body is likely highly private for the patient, especially given the patient’s religious affiliation, and embark upon the I-Thou relationship to understand any embarrassment or hesitation felt by the patient in speaking about the vaginal area. A medical professional operating under this mode would make a point to build trust with the patient before engaging in conversations rooted in the I-It relation, since this trust will build comfort in actually referring to the vaginal area and speaking freely about what the procedure entails and particularly how to engage in skin care after the procedure, given that surgical procedures for vaginal cancer present a high risk of infection should the patient not comply with the post-operative prescriptions for skin care. In this way, the medical professional has not only acknowledged the patient’s background, thus demonstrating respect for the patient as a unique individual, but also recognized how this background may play a role in regard to patient compliance, thus not only putting in place the conditions to ensure patient satisfaction but also maximizing patient health outcomes.

Third, consider the case of an extremely busy, highly career-centered woman with breast cancer who has to undergo radiation therapy in order to kill the cancer cells. The treatment schedule consists of getting one radiation treatment a day, five days a week, for six weeks straight. A medical professional operating in the I-It relationship will explain what whole breast radiation entails and emphasize the importance of being positioned correctly so that the linear accelerator is targeting only the cancer cells and not the healthy ones. A medical professional operating in the I-Thou relationship will recognize that the procedure itself may not be the only concern for this patient, as the treatment schedule is going to get in the way of the demands of her career, which is obviously very important to this patient. Thus, the appropriate starting point might be to talk through how long the treatments will be, what time of day works best with the person’s busy schedule, and which self-care steps should be implemented in order for the person to keep up with her professional obligations, especially if she perceives the cancer diagnosis as more of a nuisance than a life-altering event. Moreover, it may be appropriate to talk about the fatigue that often accompanies this type of treatment so the patient can think through the extent of the scope of her professional responsibilities for which she can reasonably commit. In doing so, the medical professional recognizes what matters to the patient, which will thereby strengthen the relationship. Again, the conversations that operate in the I-Thou mode complement the conversations that operate in the I-It mode, thereby respecting that the patient is not only a corporeal body but also a lived body.

Three rules of thumb

Which phenomenologically-informed principles can guide medical professionals in cancer care settings to better equip them to provide care that operates in both the I-Thou mode and the I-It mode? First off, it is important to point out that since we are dealing with the art of medicine and not the science of medicine, these principles should be taken as rules of thumb, rather than iron-clad prescriptions, thus heeding Aristotle’s age-old advice “to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits” (2009, 4). The three principles that we think can help guide phenomenologically-informed cancer care are as follows: 1) medical professionals should recognize that patients in cancer care settings are experiencing a changed life situation and try to understand how the patient perceives this changed life situation in order to provide appropriate patient care; 2) medical professionals should be cognizant that patients entering the cancer care setting are likely suffering due to their changed life situation and thus be sensitive to how one’s communication—both verbal and nonverbal—can affect the relationship with their patients; 3) medical professionals should attempt to understand the values that matter most to their patients in terms of their lived bodies and be willing to talk through whether those values need to be reassessed or re-prioritized due to altered life situation. All three of these deserve additional attention if they are to be employed in clinical settings.

The first principle deals primarily with empathizing with the changed life situation of the patient. Empathy is sometimes construed as the ability to feel the same feelings as the other, but at a basic level, empathy really has to do with the ability to understand the other. In her early work on the phenomenology of empathy, Edith Stein defines empathic acts as “acts in which foreign experience is comprehended” (1989, 6). Using this definition, a medical professional can display empathy to a patient in a cancer setting by simply understanding that the patient is undergoing a changed life situation and being perceptive as to how the patient perceives this change. While the details of the changed life situations of individual patients in the cancer care setting will vary widely depending on the type of cancer, its severity, the treatment plan, the prognosis, and other factors pertaining to the individual patient and specific circumstances, all persons undergoing a changed life situation in a cancer care setting are living through a situation in which their horizon of possibilities has been constricted. It is essential that medical professionals attempt to understand how their patients perceive this changed life situation and the attitudes that accompany it, since understanding this perception is crucial to providing individualized care to the lived body of the patient. In some situations, the cancer diagnosis may be perceived as a death sentence, given the stigma attached to cancer. In others, the cancer diagnosis may leave a patient in shock, denial, or fear. In still others, the patient may accept the reality of the situation and be ready to focus in on treatment. Regardless of the situation, the medical professional who provides empathic care begins by trying to understand how the patient perceives the changed life situation, which provides a baseline from which to care for the patient’s lived body.

Given that patients in the cancer setting experience a changed life situation such as a constriction of their horizon of possibilities and that suffering occurs when there is a perceived threat to one’s lived body primarily defined by one’s horizon of possibilities, medical professionals practicing in this setting must be cognizant that their patients are suffering. Again, the level of suffering is going to vary widely from patient to patient, but it is incumbent upon medical professionals to empathically engage with their patients to understand the ways in which they are suffering and try to ease this suffering if possible. Regardless of whether this suffering is met with a resilient “can do” type of attitude or met with fear and apprehension, medical professionals should recognize that the perceived threat that accompanies the changed life situation in cancer settings amounts to a loss of freedom. Heidegger states, “Each illness is a loss of freedom, a constriction of the possibility for living” (2001, 88). This loss of freedom leaves patients vulnerable, and this vulnerability often means that the patient likely has a heightened level of sensitivity that the medical professional should recognize. In such a context, “there is not a human word, not a gesture, even one which is the outcome of habit or absent-mindedness, which has not some meaning” (Merleau-Ponty 2002, xx). Thus, medical professionals should have an increased awareness as to not only how one’s verbal communication affects the patient relationship, but also how one’s posture, gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, and other nonverbal cues may affect the patient. As John Russon and Kirsten Jacobson note, such engagement in the I-Thou relationship can only be approached through the art of medicine as opposed to the science of medicine:

The waving, head-shaking, hugging, and sound-making and their bodily effects upon you can all be studied and understood physiologically, but your understanding of my expression of sympathy, enthusiasm, or disagreement is not the same as the simple feeling of objective pressure against your skin, the excitation of receptors within your retina, the transduction of sound waves in your inner ear, and so on; on the contrary, it is your recognition of what I as a subject am expressing to you as a subject. (2018, 194)

This subject-to-subject engagement occurs in the I-Thou relationship, which, we argue, requires a heightened awareness on the part of the medical professional in cancer care settings in which patients are likely to be sensitive, given their perceived sense of vulnerability felt due to their suffering.

Finally, in understanding the suffering that accompanies the changed life situation and being cognizant as to how communication can affect the patient relationship, medical professionals in the cancer care setting should attempt to understand what matters to their patients in regard to their lived bodies and talk through the ways in which the cancer has disrupted the trajectory of their lives. The cancer itself not only constricts the patient’s possibilities but the treatment can also prove to be constrictive, illustrated by the examples provided above. Medical professionals in the cancer care setting should be poised not only to listen to the values that the patient has lived for prior to the cancer diagnosis, which may be very different from the values the medical professional him or herself upholds, but also talk through whether or not these values can reasonably be upheld during and after the cancer treatment. In the case of the career-centered patient noted above, this might mean backing off of professional commitments temporarily until the cancer treatments subside. Alternatively, in the case of the patient undergoing the full laryngectomy, it might mean having the hard conversation that the patient will have to experiment with alternative means of social engagement and communication not only immediately after the operation but will have to utilize alternative communication methods for the rest of the patient’s life. Regardless of the severity of the changed life situation, medical professionals in the cancer setting should recognize that cancer “leaves no aspect of life untouched …. Your relationships, your work, your sense of who you are and who you might become, your sense of what life is and ought to be—these all change, and the change is terrifying” (Frank, 1991, 6). Those practicing the art of medicine recognize how disruptive the changed life situation can be and do their best to help their patients navigate through it. In some situations, of course, there is legitimate trauma involved in the cancer diagnosis, which may require psychological counseling. Not all medical professionals have such training and thus may need to rely upon referrals in those situations, but we think all medical professionals who provide cancer care would benefit from some background in phenomenologically-informed care and the three principles set forth provide a solid starting point from which to begin.

Concluding thoughts

In the epilogue to his excellent book, Being Mortal, Atul Gawande provides a nice assessment of medical professionals stuck in the medical gaze. He states, “We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being” (2014, 259). We have argued that the cancer care setting calls for expertise not only in the science of medicine but also in the art of medicine to enable medical professionals to not only focus on health but well-being. Phenomenology provides one avenue from which to approach the art of medicine and holistically care for the patient’s well-being. The three principles we set forth may help to guide medical professionals engaging in this art to enter into the I-Thou relationship with their patients and thus care for the patients’ lived bodies, thereby not falling prey to the medical gaze that only recognizes the I-It relationship and merely treats corporeal bodies. Cancer care needs to be informed by both science and art, and phenomenology is one avenue from which to approach the art of medicine wherein medical professionals must enter the I-Thou relationship in order to provide holistic care for their patients.