Competent physicians are indispensable — but competence alone cannot generate health when the biological, relational, social, institutional, and ecological conditions required for healing remain impaired. This paper proposes life-grounded healing as the orienting purpose connecting clinical excellence with salugenesis, salutogenesis, structural justice, collective competence, institutional responsibility, and planetary health. It argues for moving beyond the individual-competency model toward distributed healing capacity, in which responsibility is matched to authority, resources, and accountability across practitioners, teams, institutions, communities, and governments.
