M3 Students and Faculty Only: Nominations needed for the NEOMED Virtuous Healer Honor Society (VHHS)
Dear M3 Students and Faculty:
You are invited to submit nominations for the NEOMED Virtuous Healer Honor Society (VHHS). The purpose of VHHS is to recognize NEOMED students who exemplify the attributes of the virtuous healer, including:
- Altruism
- Compassion
- Curiosity
- Generosity
- Humility
- Justice
- Moral Imagination
The VHHS is composed of NEOMED students and faculty who exemplify the attributes listed above (see below for definitions of each attribute). The nomination and selection process are both codified by the VHHS Advisory Committee and reviewed on an annual basis thereafter. The Selection and Advisory Committee along with the VHHS co-chair select members annually. VHHS members are expected to attend VHHS meetings and meaningfully participate in the planning and implementation of an annual service project, as well as any other projects identified by the VHHS membership or advisors. All M3 students currently enrolled and in good academic standing are eligible for consideration.
Disclaimer: Nomination does not guarantee invitation to apply given the volume of nominations in past cycles.
At least one faculty nomination required for nominee to be considered. Faculty nominations can be solicited (excludes VHHS faculty advisors, Drs. Fredrickson and Mellott).
You may nominate up to 5 (five) M3 students for this honor and are encouraged to also include comments for each nominee explaining the reason for your nomination. Nominations without comments will not be accepted. Self-nominations are not permitted. Please only fill out the form once. Deadline to submit nominations is Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025.
M3 students use this form to nominate M3 peers
Faculty use this form to nominate M3 students
Please contact VHHS advisors Dr. Austin Fredrickson at lfredrickson@neomed.edu or Dr. Jeffrey Mellott at jmellott@neomed.edu if you have questions or would like additional information about VHHS.
Definitions
Altruism: Acting for the benefit of others regardless of the consequences for oneself. Characteristics of altruism include: it seeks to increase another’s welfare, not one’s own; it is voluntary; and it expects no external reward.
Compassion: A virtue combining concepts such as sympathy, empathy, benevolence, care, love, and
sometimes pity and mercy. These are character traits that enable professionals to use their cognitive
and psychomotor skills of healing to meet the needs of a particular patient. The need for particularity in the
healing relationship makes compassion a moral virtue.
Curiosity: An eager desire to know; inquisitiveness. For physicians, curiosity is fundamental to understanding each patient's unique experience of illness, building respectful relationships with patients, deepening self-awareness, supporting clinical reasoning, avoiding premature closure, and encouraging lifelong learning.
Generosity: Giving of oneself and one’s resources, in kindness and magnanimity without asking for anything in return.
Humility: Recognition of the limits of one’s abilities and position; openness to learn from mistakes and from others. In its relational aspect, humility includes reverence or awe for the grace and strength of patients and their caregivers, a sense that the care-provider is not self-sufficient but needs the care-receiver, and recognition of the worth of those who are oppressed and outcast.
Justice: The quality of being fair and reasonable. The principle of justice states that there should be an element of fairness in all medical decisions: fairness in decisions that burden and benefit, as well as equitable distribution of resources and effort.
Moral Imagination: In ethics, the presumed mental capacity to create or use ideas, images, and metaphors not derived from moral principles or immediate observation to discern moral truths or to develop moral responses. A focus on moral imagination is considered important to better understand the complexity of patient’s biomedical choices, providing more plausible descriptions of the decision-making process and moral change.