Posted: 26 Nov 2012 11:06 AM PST

The secret ingredient to health, according to many speakers at the Mayo Transform 2010 symposium, is love. Love from healthcare providers can support a better patient outcome and improve the work-life of the healers: doctors, nurses, and clinicians. I believe that!

Evidently, however, this love from caregivers – described as compassion, joy, intimacy, forgiveness – is not something that is traditionally learned in US medical schools (See ‘Love: a word that medicine fears’). Dr. Kirsten Meisinger, a primary care doctor in Massachusetts struggled early on with the conventional training that urges a ‘professional boundary’ between doctor and patient. To her, it had the opposite effect of love: cool distance.

I ask myself, how can this happen when the desire to heal a patient’s suffering is itself a profound and deeply felt expression of love?

Dr. Meisinger goes on to describe how she ‘unlearned’ the professional boundary concept and learned from her patients the value of expressing everyday, practical love. Dr. Meisinger says, “Once you start openly loving patients – once you open yourself – you become more effective, not less.”

So why does love support effective healing benefits for caregiver and patient? In my experience as a healer relying on spiritual means with the basis of divine Love, I have seen the power of this love eliminate fear and quickly restore the health of the patient. Mary Baker Eddy, a medical reformer through spirituality, addressed healers when she wrote, “Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching.” (Science and Health, page 454:17)

Yes, this sense of love fills the caregiver’s heart with selfless goodness and freely embraces the patient with tangible comfort. To me, this is a necessary life-force that supports the healing activity. Love-filled healing power comes from the source of divine Love, and the caregiver’s thought is then open and receptive to divinely-directed motives and safe, confident and unerring direction. Love, the secret ingredient, in this way sustains both caregiver and patient in healing results.

Eddy explains why this is so: “Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way.” (Science and Health, page 454:18)