Beneficence is an active response arising from a person's virtues that acknowledges and desires to address a person's suffering. Lydia, a 10-year-old girl, was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer late in the school year. As a result, with muted enthusiasm, she met Sam, the physician at the Children's Hospital who would be overseeing her care.
As you might expect, Sam asked Lydia a lot of questions, but it was one question in particular that demonstrated to Lydia that Sam genuinely cared about her: "What has been the hardest change for you? " While the diagnosis was devastating for Lydia, what transpired in the ensuing conversation was her love for singing and her worry that she may not be able to fulfill her lead role in the upcoming school musical that she had been practicing for so diligently. You see, Sam actually cared about Lydia as a person and not just her cancer.
In doing so, Sam was reminded of his own experiences as a teenage boy when he sprained his ankle and had to sit on the sidelines in the national championship race. Now, Sam's compassion for Lydia didn't stop there. His love and kindness for Lydia caused him to arrange to have the nurses conduct follow-up visits at her school over lunch so she wouldn't have to leave her friends and miss any of the rehearsals while visiting the clinic.
Now, if you're wondering about the musical, Lydia did play the starring role, thanks in part to the ingenuity of her healthcare team. You see, at that point, the cancer had spread almost completely to her lungs. While this caused her to be slightly out of tune and her voice to be a loud whisper at best, Lydia's swan song was her greatest performance, not only according to her, her family and friends, but also to the entire audience, including Sam, whose love and kindness towards Lydia allowed compassion to unfold.
