Ivy Lin, MD, a hospice physician at Providence Hospital in Portland, Oregon, vividly remembers a patient in his early 50s who'd been a flight attendant before he had to take leave to undergo medical treatment.

He told Lin how much he missed traveling and working with passengers, how it brought him joy to see their eyes widen when he served them in first class for the first time.

"It's just his experience as a human, his grieving the loss of those experiences" that stuck with her, Lin told MedPage Today. It reminded her that patients are human beings as well.

Lin's experience might be described as a "sacred moment," defined in a recent study in JAMA Network Open as "short periods of time that evoke powerful emotions and/or spiritual qualities of transcendence and boundlessness, as

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