When a religious person is isolated from their community, whether due to hospitalization or military service, they can often rely on a chaplain for spiritual support. But where does a non-religious person turn when facing the same circumstances? And what tools do they have for meaning making?

Our guest is Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT and author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God. As a humanist chaplain, Greg has spent his career building ethical communities that are united around the idea that human sociality and interdependence are a sufficient foundation for a meaningful life. Greg’s writings have been published widely, including in TIME magazine and The Washington Post, and he is a prominent public speaker in humanist and interfaith communities. 

In our conversation, Greg explains the role of a humanist chaplain, why a humanist chaplain is not necessarily an oxymoron, and how he guides individuals on their meaning-making journey. We discuss Greg’s candidate for the world’s most powerful word and a humanist’s argument for pursuing the work of healing over wealth. And finally, Greg walks us through the thesis of his most recent book Tech Agnostic – how technology has become a religion of its own, with a particular set of downsides. 

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

2:30 - Mr Epstein’s personal definitions of ‘chaplain’ and ‘religion’ 

8:23 - How Mr. Epstein uses a humanist framework to guide meaning-making

24:35 - Is there an absolute ‘good’? 

33:25 - The risks of technology as a religion

45:30 - Advice for medical professionals engaged in the work of healing while operating within a system built for profit

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Many medical trainees are driven to medicine by their moral or religious principles — only to find that they are expected to check their principles at the patient’s door. When this happens, physicians and patients may lose the opportunity for deeper, more healing relationships.

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Farr Curlin, a hospitalist and palliative care physician at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Curlin holds joint appointments in the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine and Duke Divinity School, where he studies the intersection of medicine, ethics, and religion. 

From a young age, Dr. Curlin was intrigued by the moral dimensions of medicine. As a medical trainee, he began to study how the religious backgrounds of physicians inform their practice. He is the co-author of The Way of Medicine, in which he challenges the modern “provider of services” model and calls for a recovery of medicine’s spiritual foundations as a healing profession. Now, at Duke Divinity School, he spends significant time helping physicians re-center their practice around the question: “What is Good?” 

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss attitudes toward religion in the medical profession and how many medical professionals worry that being openly religious may make them seem retrograde — or worse. We explore striking the balance between offering physician wisdom while respecting patient autonomy, consider whether the project of medicine makes sense when viewed through the lens of secular humanism, and reflect on how the physician attributes of humility and respect enable physicians to productively bring their full selves to the bedside, all while practicing medicine within a morally pluralistic society.

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

2:48 - Dr. Curlin’s path to medicine and what drew him to a career at the intersection of religion and medicine 

19:30 - Dr. Curlin’s thoughts on why doctors often feel they cannot be openly religious

35:45 - How Dr. Curlin would change medical training to create a deeper focus on personal commitments and moral conviction 

41:15 - Exploring the limitations of artificial agnosticism at the patient’s bedside

51:50 - How fostering a spiritual connection to the work of healing can mitigate burnout

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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There is something uniquely haunting about many neurological diseases. These conditions often don't only affect the body — they reshape the very foundation of who we are, our memories, our personalities, our language. When the brain begins to fail, the boundary between illness and identity start to blur; the person we know begins to fade even before their life has ended. 

In this episode, we are joined by John Rhee, MD, MPH, a neuro-oncologist and palliative care physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, whose work sits at the intersection of science, suffering, and the soul. He cares for patients with brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases, conditions that challenge our deepest assumptions about selfhood, dignity, and what it means to live a meaningful life. Dr. Rhee is also the co-founder and executive director of The Hippocratic Society, a community of clinicians that aims to cultivate virtues that characterize good medical practitioners and ideals that make medicine a sacred profession. 

Over the course of our conversation, we talk about suffering — not just physical pain, but the existential kind. We explore how the brain anchors our identity, how its decline confronts us with profound questions, how medical education can improve by training doctors to be more reflective in their work, why an element of spirituality remains critical to medicine, what it means to accompany someone through decline, and more.

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

3:00 - Dr. Rhee‘s path to medicine

6:30 - The general scope of focus for a neuro-oncologist 

16:07 - Understanding the brain from both medical and existential perspectives 

26:36 - The mission of The Hippocratic Society

40:45 - Why “virtue” is central to the focus of The Hippocratic Society 

49:34 - How to get involved with The Hippocratic Society

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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We are joined in this episode by Eric Reinhart, MD, an anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and psychiatry resident at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. While Dr. Reinhart is the first resident-in-training we've had on this program, his path has been far from straightforward. Prior to residency, Dr. Reinhart conducted ethnographic work in Chicago's South Side, India, South Africa, and migrant communities in Southern Europe. Through this research, he addresses the multifaceted effects of poverty and social inequities on community health. In this conversation, we discuss how he applies his anthropology training to create culturally sensitive systemic changes and how healthcare providers can play a more active role in engaging with their communities.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How having a deaf brother led Dr. Reinhart to medicine - 1:54
• Dr. Reinhart’s observations of the disconnect between the ideals he heard in medical school and the reality of how profit-driven hospitals operate - 5:59
• Why Dr. Reinhart pursued a study in anthropology to learn how to address contemporary social ills - 12:46
• How a case study of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Russian prisons informed Dr. Reinhart’s evaluation of pandemics - 19:37
• What drew Dr. Reinhart to psychoanalysis and psychiatry, and how he applies them to his field studies - 26:41
• A discussion of the power structures inherent to medico-social field work and how to properly determine what a community needs - 32:04
• Advice on how doctors and medical trainees can become empowered to help change the systems they work in - 41:21
• How Dr. Reinhart hopes to apply his experiences to improve community-based care - 48:42

You can follow Dr. Eric Reinhart on Twitter @_Eric_Reinhart.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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The wellness industry saturates our cultural consciousness, with juice cleanses, organic skincare, and spa retreats flooding our social media feeds. But what does this plethora of dazzling — and often-expensive — lifestyle products all amount to? Not much, argues Pooja Lakshmin, MD, a psychiatrist who specializes in women's mental health and clinical assistant professor at George Washington University School of Medicine. As she writes, "our understanding of self-care and wellness is incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. We cannot meditate our way out of a 40 hour workweek without childcare. These wellness products keep us looking outward, comparing ourselves with others or striving for perfection." She details her ideas for achieving true wellness in her recently released book, Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness. In this episode, Dr. Lakshmin joins us to discuss how she overcame her own struggles working in medicine and details practical strategies for real self-care, which, in her words, "isn't a thing to do or buy, but a way to be." 

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Lakshmin’s rocky initial foray into medicine led her a career in psychiatry - 2:15
• Dr. Lakshmin’s disillusionment with medicine, her two years away from the profession, and what she learned from immersing herself in the wellness industry - 5:34
• Reflections on the state of the wellness industry - 10:42
• An overview of Dr. Lakshmin’s book Real Self-Care and what real self-care looks like - 15:52
• A deeper dive into the first principle of real self-care: boundary setting - 18:47
• A discussion of how the American healthcare system often exploits doctors and nurses - 24:25
• The second principle of real self-care: self-compassion - 32:08
• The third principle of real self-care: knowing your values - 38:44
• The fourth principle of real self-care: empower oneself to create change - 45:09
• Dr. Lakshmin’s advice on getting control of your self-care journey - 50:43

In this episode, we discussed the essay The Business of Healthcare Depends on Exploiting Doctors and Nurses by Dr. Danielle Ofri, published in the New York Times.

We also discussed Dr. Lakshmin’s article How Society Turned its Back on Mothers, published in the New York Times.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin is the founder and CEO of GEMMA, a women’s mental healthcare education community focused on impact and equity.

You can follow Dr. Pooja Lakshmin on Twitter @PoojaLakshmin.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Approximately 1 in 700 babies in the United States are born with Down Syndrome. Yet, despite how common this condition is for people, we don’t often have the chance to hear their stories. In this episode, we are joined by Dashiell Meier, a young aspiring filmmaker and disability advocate who has Down Syndrome. Over the course of our conversation, we have the wonderful opportunity to explore how Dashiell sees the world as he reflects upon the stereotypes that society holds against people with disabilities, discusses what makes his favorite doctors stand out, shares his passion for storytelling, and offers advice to clinicians on how to better connect with patients who have disabilities.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dashiell currently helps Stanford medical students learn to communicate with patients with disabilities - 1:47
• Dashiell’s academic interests and career aspirations in the entertainment world - 3:22
• Dashiell’s interactions with doctors and what makes his favorites stand out - 5:22
• A discussion of the stereotypes that people with Down Syndrome face - 7:42
• What Dashiell wishes people knew about Down Syndrome - 11:00
• The movement for people with disabilities that Dashiell is spearheading, and what he hopes to achieve through it - 19:10
• Advice on building good relationships with people who have disabilities - 27:00
• The projects Dashiell intends to create as a filmmaker - 32:04
• How to develop greater empathy for people with disabilities - 34:46
• Advice to new clinicians and trainees on how best to interact with patients with disabilities - 37:10

You can follow Dashiell’s film and video projects on his YouTube channel. You can also follow him on Twitter @DashiellMeier.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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From Tanzania to India, from Tibet to Antarctica, Jonathan Reisman, MD, our guest in this episode, has practiced medicine in truly diverse regions of the world. Dr. Reisman's talents and passions are unparalleled in their variety; he is, among many things, an emergency physician, naturalist, food writer, travel writer, and wilderness survival expert. He is the author of The Unseen Body, an exploration of the human anatomy through all of its miraculous, mundane, bizarre, and surprising parts, presented through the eyes of a lifelong adventurer. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Reisman shares his experiences traveling through the most remote areas of the world, what his voyages have taught him about health and illness, the impact of emerging digital technologies on the doctor-patient relationship, and much more.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How a love of the natural world led young Dr. Reisman to travel abroad and ultimately to the medical profession - 2:04
• Dr. Reisman’s early adventures studying sociology in the Russian Far East - 5:30
• The parallels between exploring the natural world and the human body - 9:26
• The puzzle-solving aspects of medicine and the impact of emerging technologies and artificial intelligence - 12:18
• Dr. Reisman’s reflects on his time practicing medicine in India, Tanzania, Nepal, and Antarctica, and the importance of the physical exam in these settings - 21:15
• The strengths and limitations of the physical exam, especially as they relate to the clinician-patient relationship - 31:53
• How artificial intelligence will complement human physicians in the future - 36:38
• What Dr. Reisman believes is critical to the future of medical education - 46:12
• Dr. Reisman’s advice to young clinicians on how to keep their curiosity alive - 55:10

Dr. Jonathan Reisman is the author of The Unseen Body: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of the Human Anatomy.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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For all the deeply rewarding moments medicine offers, it is also a profession often intensely challenging on both systemic and personal levels. Our guest in this episode is Caroline Elton, PhD, an occupational psychologist who has devoted her career to counseling doctors and medical trainees in the National Health Service and various medical schools in the UK. She is the author of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors, which discusses the physical, mental, and emotional toll of medical training and practice. Among other issues, she writes about how doctors deal with guilt and shame, gender and racial discrimination in health care training, the erosion of the clinician-patient relationship in modern medicine, and how clinicians can build emotional resilience. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Elton shares what led her to this work, exposes the many shortcomings in how doctors are trained today, and explores how we can create a more humane path forward.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• What led Dr. Elton to her unique work in counseling physicians - 2:04
• Reflections on both the compassion and the callousness Dr. Elton witnessed as she observed physicians (her patients) in their working environments - 10:01
• A review of medical training in the UK versus the US - 15:16
• A discussion of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors and the concept of moral injury - 19:51
• The kinds of patients Dr. Elton sees in her present work - 25:00
• How institutional cultures can come to valorize toxic, brutal expectations placed on physicians - 27:03
• How Dr. Elton’s managed her first patient, a doctor who was planning on quitting medicine just weeks after beginning her postgraduate training - 32:49
• A discussion of how sexism and other forms of bigotry factors into burnout - 38:20
• Why the screening process for selecting future doctors should be improved - 43:37
• How a trainee can prepare themselves for the psychological demands of a medical career - 48:00
• Advice to administrators and executives of how best to serve the psychological demands of their medical workforce - 50:34

Dr. Caroline Elton is the author of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest professional association of physicians in the United States, comprising more than 270,000 clinicians across all medical specialties. It is involved in all aspects of American medicine, from establishing standards of care, to reforming medical education, to lobbying for health care policies. Our guest in this episode is Jack Resneck Jr., MD, chair of the department of dermatology at the University of California San Francisco and President of the AMA from 2022 – 2023. In this conversation, we explore Dr. Resneck's personal journey in medicine, how the AMA is addressing physician burnout, how the AMA is coming to terms with its own history with race relations, how digital health is transforming medicine, how health care reimbursement rates are determined, and how doctors can play a more active role in advocating for their own work.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Resneck’s early years as a self-described ‘policy nerd’ and growing up in a physician family - 2:10
• How Dr. Resneck first became involved with the AMA - 6:01
• A brief review of the history and mission of the AMA - 8:23
• A discussion of the epidemic of burnout and how the AMA is addressing it - 12:45
• A survey of the AMA’s current policy priorities - 23:42
• A conversation around the incentive discrepancies around primary care medicine and how the AMA’s Relative Value Update Committee (RUC) is addressing this - 29:26
• How artificial intelligence and other new technologies are shaping the future of medicine, and why physicians must take an active role in their development - 36:25
• Reflections on the history of the AMA’s race relations and what the modern medical establishment must do to remedy health discrepancies, including The AMA’s Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity - 47:15
• Dr. Resneck’s optimistic view of the future of the profession - 55:08

In this episode we discussed several reports and articles, including:

The Flexner Report, a 1910 survey of the medical profession that was used to standardize medical education.

How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession by Daniela Drake.

The Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, a recently-passed legislation aimed at helping physicians.

Follow Dr. Resneck on Twitter @JackResneckMD.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Matters of faith and spirituality are seldom openly discussed in medicine. But for our guest in this episode, pediatric palliative care doctor Elisha Waldman, MD, these issues are a daily fixture of his work. Dr. Waldman is former associate chief of the Division of Pediatric Palliative Care at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and former medical director of pediatric palliative care at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He is the author of the memoir This Narrow Space, in which he describes his seven years working as a pediatric oncologist at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Israel, while grappling with the ethical and political complexities that came with treating his Muslim, Jewish, and Christian patients. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Waldman discusses his formative religious upbringing, delves deep into what it means to be present with patients in moments of suffering and existential anguish, and examines what his experiences have taught him about the enigmas of life, death, faith, and identity.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Waldman’s early interest in religious studies influenced his pursuit of a career caring for children with cancer - 2:12
• Dr. Waldman’s religious upbringing as the son of a conservative Jewish rabbi - 7:00
• A discussion of spiritual care in medicine and what it means to be a “spiritual generalist” versus a “spiritual specialist” - 13:49
• Reflections on what brought Dr. Waldman to Jerusalem and what it was like to practice medicine in such a diverse and politically complex city - 23:01
• How Dr. Waldman finds the emotional fortitude to continue giving care and comfort to children who are seriously ill - 26:11
• A discussion of powerful and beautiful moments in accompanying patients through suffering - 33:40
• How pain differs from suffering and what physicians can do once they recognize that difference - 48:13
• Dr. Waldman’s advice to young clinicians on being present and curious with patients - 57:25

Dr. Elisha Waldman is the author of This Narrow Space: A Pediatric Oncologist, His Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is an independent organization that provides expert evidence-based guidance on issues of health, biomedical science, and health policy. Election to the NAM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, recognizing individuals who have shown exceptional professional achievement and commitment to service. In this episode, we are joined by Victor Dzau, MD, who has been president of the NAM since 2014. He previously served as President of the Duke University Health System, Chairman of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School, and Chairman of Medicine at Stanford Health Care. As a leading scholar in cardiovascular medicine, his pioneering research laid the foundation for the development of blood pressure medications widely used today. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Dzau discusses his challenging upbringing as a refugee of the Chinese Civil War, describes his dedication to health equity and global health; explores the work of the NAM, and passionately shares why clinicians should be more involved in public discourse.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How growing up as a refugee of the Chinese Civil War shaped Dr. Dzau’s path and practice as a physician - 2:27
• How Dr. Dzau’s became a physician-scientist - 7:06
• The circumstances that led Dr. Dzau to take on issues of global health - 11:03
• Reflections on how Dr. Dzau stays in touch with the deeper meaning of medicine - 13:05
• A discussion of the values Dr. Dzau holds in his various roles - 17:41
• The difficulties Dr. Dzau faced during his education and career and how he recovered from burnout - 20:04
• A description of the purpose and mission of the National Academy of Medicine - 28:36
• How new members are elected to the NAM - 32:26
• A survey of the current issues the NAM focuses on and how Dr. Dzau thinks about the political dimensions of his work - 36:25
• The need for medical professionals to better communicate scientific facts with the broader public - 41:25
• Advice to early-career clinicians on leadership - 45:32

Dr. Dzau delivered the Boston University Class of 2020 Commencement Speech, in which he discussed his own experience of burnout.

You can follow Dr. Dzau on Twitter @VictorDzau.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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While this podcast has largely featured clinicians sharing the joy they have found in medicine, in this episode—breaking with tradition—we speak with a physician left disenchanted by her experiences working in medicine. Our guest is Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD, a minimally-invasive and bariatric surgeon who conducts research on gender equity and implicit bias in medicine. At Stanford Hospital, she advises initiatives to promote physician well-being and diversity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her frontline experiences were featured in Newsweek, NBC, CBS, and other press outlets. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Salles shares fiercely honest accounts about the difficulties she has faced as an immigrant, minority, and woman in medicine. Her stories are by turns saddening, shocking, and amusing, but ultimately invoke us to reflect on the part we can all play to create a more just and inclusive path for current and future physicians.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Salles’  path to medicine and her regrets along the way - 2:11
• The social pressures within medicine to overlook the downsides and hardships of a medical career - 7:11
• Why Dr. Salles chose surgery as a specialty - 11:02
• How, upon accepting her first academic position , Dr. Salles found herself in an environment that did not adequately support her surgical practice and her research - 14:12
• The systemic and cultural factors that led to the lack of support Dr. Salles faced - 23:03
• Dr. Salles’ research on gender equity in medicine - 29:57
• A discussion of the challenges of life as an academic physician - 32:13
• How Dr. Salles made the decision to put herself over her career and leave her academic position - 36:47
• Why it can sometimes seem that hospitals are exploiting physicians - 41:12
• Advice on how institutions can better promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their culture - 47:32

Learn more about Dr. Salles’ work on her website and follow her on Twitter @Arghavan_Salles.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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In the first half of 2020, New York City quickly became the American epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 200,000 cases reported in the first few months. The city came to a standstill as thousands of people died alone in hospitals and bodies piled up in freezer trucks that could not transport them away fast enough. In August 2020, amid this cataclysm, Dave Chokshi, MD assumed position as New York City's Health Commissioner and began the arduous task of repairing a broken city and restoring public trust among its residents. Prior to this work, Dr. Chokshi led the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation and was a White House Fellow at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. In this episode, Dr. Chokshi joins us to share the core values that drive his public health work and how he navigated the challenges of leading New York City through COVID-19.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Chokshi, early in his life, came to understand the association between health and opportunity - 3:52
• A discussion of how privilege impacts the opportunities available to individuals and how this recognition affects Dr. Chokshi’s medical work - 7:40
• How Hurricane Katrina revealed to Dr. Chokshi the flaws in our existing health systems - 15:48
• Dr. Chokshi’s involvement with Universities Allied for Essential Medicine - 19:34
• An account of Dr. Chokshi’s tenure as New York City Health Commissioner during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - 24:31
• Dr. Chokshi’s principles of effective leadership - 32:31
• Reflections on the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and how indebted society is to nurses and hospital house staff - 37:15
• Dr. Chokshi’s personal philosophy on maintaining a balanced sense of humility - 53:48
• Five lessons for medical trainees and clinicians on staying connected to what makes medicine meaningful - 57:38

Dr. Chokshi briefly discussed his early work with the Committed Communities Development Trust in Mumbai, India.

You can follow Dr. Dave Chokshi on Twitter @DaveChokshi.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Neurosurgery is known as one of the most precise and demanding specialties in medicine. It requires absolute technical mastery in a surgical field where a millimeter’s difference can be the deciding factor between lifelong disability or a life restored. But what happens when a surgeon trained to be objective and detached experiences deep personal loss? How does it reshape the way they practice medicine? 

In this episode, we are joined by Joseph “Jody” Stern, MD, a neurosurgeon and the author of Grief Connects Us: A Neurosurgeon's Lessons on Love, Loss, and Compassion (2021). His book is an honest, deep, personal reflection on how losing his sister shattered the emotional armor he had built as a surgeon — and in doing so, made him a better doctor. Over the course of this conversation, 

Dr. Stern discusses the complexity of neurosurgery and what it teaches about the fragility of life; why the way we talk to patients and families matters just as much as the procedures we perform; how his own grief changed the way he approaches medicine; and the pressure in medicine to stay emotionally detached and why that might actually be harming both doctors and patients. This is a conversation that extends beyond grief. It's about how we, as doctors, patients, and people, can show up for each other in ways that truly matter.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:  

2:37 - How Dr. Stern became drawn to neurosurgery and what has kept him in the field 

6:00 - Dr. Stern’s quest to integrate palliative care into neurosurgery 

10:06 - Why medical training often makes it hard for trainees to remember their humanistic calling

15:54 - The importance of shifting medical training to focus to more on patient-centered care

23:41 - Rethinking medicine to better honor the humanity of the patient 

31:41 - Developing “emotional agility” as a physician 

37:09 - The personal and professional insights that Dr. Stern experienced when he helped his sister through her battle with leukemia 

47:47 - How to overcome compassion fatigue

54:15 - Dr. Stern’s advice for new clinicians 

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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In 2015, New York Times journalist John Leland set out to follow the lives of six people over the age of 85. What John learned shattered his preconceived notions about aging, loneliness, and loss. The resulting 2018 book, Happiness is a Choice You Make, became an international bestseller and delved into how these older individuals found wisdom and joy in the later stages of life. In this episode, John joins us to discuss the transformational exploration he undertook and lessons on living well he has discovered from this journey. 

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How a college music reviewer came to write for The New York Times - 1:41
• How John’s exploration of aging began when he was initially—reluctantly—assigned to write a series of articles on old age and retirement - 5:04
• Reflections on how John’s expectations of aging — including loss, sadness, loneliness — were transformed over the course of this writing project - 9:01
• How John discovers his interview subjects - 11:38 
• A discussion of John’s book, Happiness is a Choice You Make, and the lessons he learned from his subjects -14:44
• Advice to young clinicians on finding moments of happiness in their careers - 26:19
• John’s surprising realization that elders are not “depressed all the time” - 33:53
• A discussion of John’s recent article, in which he was documents the last days of Shatzi Weisberger, a nurse and prominent death educator - 36:53
• Reflections on how John’s relationships with older adults have changed his perception of death - 40:07
• Advice to clinicians on how they can better help older patients connect with what makes their lives meaningful - 45:03

John Leland is the author of the book Happiness is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old.

He is also a staff writer at the New York Times. In this episode we discussed his articles How Loneliness is Damaging Our Health, and She Preached About Death Without Fear. Could She Practice it?

You can follow John Leland on Twitter @JohnLeland.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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One of medicine's thorniest ethical questions concerns the lengths to which a physician should go to ameliorate suffering, including the use of medical means to hasten death. Yet, particularly for those who care for patients with, or for those who live with, serious illness, this question is all but inevitable. In this episode, Stefanie Green, MD, the current president of the Canadian Association of Medical Assistance in Dying Assessors and Providers, shares her experiences helping patients die and how she views this branch of medicine. Dr. Green has been at the forefront of the change in legal regulation and clinical practice around medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada. In her 2022 book, This is Assisted Dying, she shares the delicate, challenging, and humane moments she has witnessed while navigating this unique work.

Disclaimer: This episode does not advocate for or against medical assistance in dying. Rather, it seeks to understand why a clinician may choose to perform this work. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Green transitioned from a career in maternity care to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) - 5:14
• A brief legal history of MAiD in Canada, beginning with Rodriguez v British Columbiaand including the sea change that came with Carter v. Canada - 6:39
• An overview of how MAiD works today in Canada - 12:14
• How MAiD works in the United States, specifically in California, and the role of prognosis in a patient’s eligibility for MAiD - 15:43
• Dr. Green’s reflections on how two decades working in maternity prepared her for MAiD - 20:45
• The specific process by which Dr. Green helps her patients die - 24:13
• The first patient encounter in which Dr. Green provided MAiD - 27:53
• Reflections on the frame of mind Dr. Green must adopt in order to perform this work - 35:04
• How Dr. Green processes the difficult emotions arising from her work - 43:22
• Dr. Green’s reflections on her role as a patient advocate when handling family conflicts at end of life - 47:50
• Advice for clinicians about connecting with patients through empathetic presence - 51:35

Dr. Stefanie Green is the author of This is Assisted Dying.

You can follow Dr. Stefanie Green on Twitter @DocSGreen.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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What does it take to lead a health department with a budget of more than $50 billion, overseeing the health of nearly 20 million Americans? Here to tell us about that is Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, who was the 15th New York State Commissioner of Health from 2011 to 2014. Today, Dr. Shah is a nationally recognized advocate of patient safety, health care innovation, and high-quality, low-cost care. He has variously served as Chief Operating Officer of Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, Advisor to the CDC Director, Senior Fellow of the Institute of Health Improvement, and Senior Scholar at Stanford University's Clinical Excellence Research Center. In this episode, Dr. Shah joins us to share his philosophy of healthcare leadership and how meaningful relationships anchor his work.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Shah’s upbringing and the influence of Jainism steered him away from a lucrative career in finance and into medicine - 1:53
• Two patient stories in which seemingly simple mistakes led to moments of awakening for Dr. Shah in recognizing his purpose in medicine - 6:21
• A brief overview of Dr. Shah’s career path - 13:47
• Lessons on empathetic leadership that Dr. Shah picked up along the way - 19:21
• How forging strong relationships helped Dr. Shah find solutions on big issues during his time as New York State’s Health Commissioner - 21:57
• Dr. Shah’s current pursuits, including those focused on making a business case for supporting the unpaid caregivers of patients - 31:23
• Why transparency and bureaucratic structure are critical components of healthcare reform in the United States - 37:46
• Advice to clinicians on what makes effective leaders and collaborators, and how to find passion for meaningful projects - 41:43

Dr. Shah is a trustee of the John A. Hartford Foundation, a board member of STERIS, and an advisor to GSR Ventures.

You can follow Dr. Nirav R. Shah on Twitter @NiravRShah or on LinkedIn.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Storytelling, pain, rage, and cultural competency are just some of the themes we will explore in this episode. Our guest, Haider Warraich, MD, grew up and went to medical school in Pakistan before completing residency at Harvard Medical School and fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at Duke University Medical Center. Today, he is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the associate director of the Heart Failure Program at the VA Boston Health Care System. A prolific writer, he contributes regularly to the New York Times, Washington Post, and others. He is the author of three books on medicine for the general audience, most recently 2022’s The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain, which examines the nature of pain not only as a physical, but also a historical and cultural experience. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Warraich compares his medical experiences in Pakistan and in the US, discusses why he strives to incorporate palliative care into his cardiology work, and offers an impassioned critique of how modern medicine fails to address patients' suffering.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Warraich went from thinking of his medical training as an “arranged marriage” to loving the career - 2:10
• How Dr. Warraich stays connected to his patients and his work despite the intense pressure and responsibility he experiences on a daily basis - 7:03
• What drew Dr. Warraich to cardiology and end-of-life care - 13:22
• Dr. Warraich’s reflections on the gaps in the care of patients with heart disease and how he now strives to reform the practice of cardiology - 17:33
• A discussion of how the medical culture of Pakistan differs from the United States and how they can be shockingly similar - 22:06
• How Tom Brady, the football quarterback, inspires Dr. Warraich to stay connected to the emotional core of his practice - 28:49
• Why it’s important to stay in a field if you care about it, especially if you hope to change and improve it - 35:37
• Dr. Warraich’s reflections on the nature of pain and how he hopes to change our cultural conversation around it - 41:38
• How acute pain and chronic pain are very different processes and how we can address suffering as a subject and deeply personal experience - 45:17

You can follow Dr. Warraich on Twitter @haiderwarraich.

Dr. Haider Warraich is the author of several books, including The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain, Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life, and State of the Heart: Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease.

In this episode, we discuss the article “At the Edge of the Inside” by David Brooks, for the New York Times, and the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, and feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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What if we could scientifically prove that compassion improves our well-being, our cognitive function, our longevity, and societal welfare? Here to explore these questions is our guest on this episode, James Doty, MD, a neurosurgeon, inventor, entrepreneur and writer. As the founding director of Stanford's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, his academic focus is the neurobiological effects of meditation, compassion, and altruistic behavior. His bestselling 2017 memoir, Into the Magic Shop, details his path from a troubled childhood to becoming an internationally-renowned surgeon and philanthropist. He has served on the board of a number of nonprofit organizations, including as former Chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation, and is on the International Advisory Board of the Council of the Parliament of the World's Religions. In this episode, we discuss his unlikely journey to medicine and the incredible insights on compassion he has collected over the years.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Doty’s difficult childhood experiences and how the kindness of strangers pulled him to medicine - 2:10
• How Dr. Doty dealt with the fish-out-of-water experiences in medical school - 11:00
• A discussion of negative self-talk and how to overcome it - 17:30
• How Dr. Doty went from developing a neuroscience center in impoverished Mississippi to establishing an altruism research lab at Stanford University - 20:19
• A discussion of the eponymous incident of Dr. Doty’s book Into the Magic Shop and how it profoundly shifted his view on compassion - 26:06
• A review of some of the exciting findings of Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education - 32:36
• Reflections on how Dr. Doty practices compassion in his daily life - 38:29
• A brief discussion of the power of belief and how it shapes our reality - 44:00
• A discussion of how the dehumanizing bureaucracy and profiteering of the medical field is failing physicians - 49:55

Dr. James Doty is the author of the best-selling memoir Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart.

He is the senior editor of the Handbook of Compassion Science published by Oxford University.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Too often, modern medicine focuses on life-extending interventions for those nearing the end of life at the expense of quality of life. Our guest today, Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, argues we urgently need to rethink the emphasis of end-of-life care. She's the founder of the End Well Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to improve how doctors and patients approach issues of mortality, as well as an executive producer of the 2018 film End Game and a major funder of the 2016 film Extremis, two Academy Award-nominated short documentaries on end-of-life care. As a health communicator. Dr. Ungerleider is the host of the TED Health Podcast and has been featured as a medical expert on CNN, CBS, PBS, Fox News, and other news networks. In this episode, she discusses her journey in health care and shares her mission to transform the end of life experience of patients everywhere and make dying well a part of living well.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Ungerleider found her way to a career in health care and how she pushed through imposter syndrome while in medical school - 2:23
• Dr. Ungerleider’s formative experiences working with elderly patients in the ICU, leading her question the practices of modern medicine when dealing with seriously ill patients - 10:18
• How the Covid-19 pandemic has shifted public consciousness around death and dying - 15:30
• The origins of End Well, the conference and organization founded by Dr. Ungerleider and her colleagues in 2017 - 23:51
• What it would look like for there to be a shift in the cultural conversation around death and dying - 30:31
• A reflection on the risks of romanticizing the dying process - 36:54
• The recent cancer diagnosis in Dr. Ungerleider’s family and how this has propelled her to proactively manage her own risks - 43:49
• Advice for new clinicians on dealing with patient deaths - 48:49

Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider is the author of “My Dad’s Terminal Cancer Diagnosis May Have Saved My Life” for Newsweek.

You can follow Dr. Ungerleider on Twitter @ShoshUMD

In this episode, we discussed The Good Place, an award-winning sitcom series about philosophy and the afterlife.

We discussed several articles and studies about whether physicians are more likely to choose to die at home than the general public. These articles include “How Doctors Die” by Ken Murray, “Association of Occupation as a Physician With Likelihood of Dying in a Hospital” by Blecker, Johnson, Altekruse, et al. and “Patients, and Doctors, Aren’t Dying at Home” by Dr. Danielle Ofri (our guest on episode 35).

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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"Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most."   
So writes Frank Ostaseski, an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care. Frank is the founder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, the first Buddhist hospice in America. Over the course of his career, Frank has accompanied over 1000 people through the dying process; these experiences have taught him lessons on how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our most authentic selves. He describes these lessons in his bestselling 2017 book, The Five Invitations. In this episode, Frank joins us to share hard-earned wisdom from his unique life journey. Over the course of our deeply reflective and even meditative conversation, we discuss matters ranging from Japanese death poems, to Buddhist mindfulness practices, to what courage looks like in the face of death.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How the AIDS crisis led to the founding of the Zen Hospice Project - 2:16
• What Frank’s work looks like on a daily basis - 3:52
• Frank’s role as an ‘interpreter’ between patients and doctors - 5:57
• How clinicians can develop their own rituals in the process of healing patients - 9:09
• How Frank makes sense of the grief and suffering he witnesses and, despite it all, keep his spirit balanced - 13:40
• How the tenets of Buddhism influenced care at the Zen Hospice Project - 25:58
• How progresses in modern medicine sometimes hinders us in our acceptance of the impermanence and inevitability of death - 33:56
• Lessons on love, mindfulness, and finding meaning from Frank’s stories of patients at the end of life - 38:20
• The Five Invitations and what they look like in practice - 45:20

Frank Ostaseski is the author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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The ICU can be a traumatizing place for patients, who are frequently heavily sedated, rendered unable to speak by breathing tubes, isolated by family visit limitations, and sometimes even physically restrained. In fact, a significant proportion of patients discharged from the ICU later develop persistent cognitive impairments and physical disabilities. Over the past two decades, Wes Ely, MD has worked to improve the care of patients in the ICU, leading landmark studies resulting in the development of delirium prevention protocols that are now adopted in ICUs everywhere. Today, Dr. Ely co-directs the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction, and Survivorship (CIBS) Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In this episode, Dr. Ely joins us to share his career-long fight to reform ICU medicine and to recount poignant stories that illuminate and elevate the humanity of patients amid the chaos of the ICU — and in the process discusses themes that seldom appear in contemporary medical discourse, such as love, beauty, and mercy.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Ely discovered medicine as a calling while growing up in rural Louisiana - 2:33
• How a fascination with cardiopulmonary physiology, combined with an interest in patient relationships, led Dr. Ely to critical care medicine - 4:27
• A discussion of how patients in ICUs can often be “de-humanized” - 6:31
• A story from early in Dr. Ely’s career that illustrates “malignant normality” — when treatment norms led to patient harm - 10:40
• A discussion of physician burnout and how the dehumanization of patients contributes to it - 13:27
• What Dr. Ely and his colleagues have learned through years of research about the harmful standard practices of ICU care - 18:53
• An explanation of the ABCDEF treatment bundle designed by Dr. Ely and his collaborators to improve outcomes of patients in the ICU patients - 24:04
• How Dr. Ely processes the guilt and shame he feels from the harm he inadvertently caused to patients early in his career - 29:37
• Reflections on how eye contact, physical touch, and openness of the heart are essential to good medicine - 36:03
• A discussion on how Dr. Ely’s spirituality has influenced his approach to patient care - 44:51
• What it means to provide healing when patients are facing serious illness, even at the end of life - 50:45

Dr. Wes Ely is the author of Every Deep-Drawn Breath, a chronicle of his experiences caring for ICU patients.

You can find out more about his work at ICUDelirium.org

Follow Dr. Ely on Twitter @WesElyMD

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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A pivotal development in the history of cancer research was the discovery that cancers can arise from mutations in genes already present in normal, healthy cells. Joining us in this episode is Harold Varmus, MD, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989 with his colleague, J. Michael Bishop, for this discovery. Their work has enabled scientists to explore why certain cancers develop in the human body and how we can develop better cancer treatments that target these genetic mutations. In addition to his pioneering research, Dr. Varmus has served as Director of the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Scientific Advisor to the US Government, World Health Organization, and various other foundations and academic institutions. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Varmus describes his groundbreaking research, approach to institutional leadership, and his advocacy for the democratization of scientific knowledge through his role in the founding of PubMed Central and the Public Library of Science.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Varmus' broad educational interests led him to pursue a medical career - 2:56
• How working at the National Institutes of Health drove Dr. Varmus’s passion for research and the trailblazing path his career took - 8:48
• A summary of Dr. Varmus’s research on retroviral oncogenes, which led to major advancements in cancer diagnoses and treatments - 16:35
• How Dr. Varmus became involved in the politics of science after receiving a Nobel Prize -  27:13
• Dr. Varmus’ mission while he was Director of the National Institutes of Health and his perspectives on the elements of effective healthcare institutional leadership - 30:28
• A discussion of open access publishing, a mechanism of distributing the results of scientific research online for free - 32:37

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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For all the crucial work physicians do in the hospital, no one spends more time with hospitalized patients than nurses. This is especially true in the intensive care unit, where nurses serve as patients’ conduits with their medical team and perhaps even with the outside world. Joining us in this episode is Christin Thankachan, an ICU nurse at Stanford Health Care who cares for the most seriously ill cancer patients in the hospital. Over the course of our stirring conversation, we ask her to reflect on how she guides patients and their families, with a comforting and compassionate hand, through life’s darkest moments. In addition, Christin shares the unique challenges she has faced as a frontline worker during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how she has maintained hope and meaning through these trying times.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Hurricane Sandy pushed Christin towards a career in nursing - 2:06
• The differences between a nurse’s responsibilities in an intensive care unit and a medical/surgical unit - 5:13
• What a typical day is like for an ICU nurse - 7:26
• How Christin finds the physical, emotional, and psychological stamina to care for some of the sickest patients in the hospital - 10:22
• The kinds of relationships Christin forms with her patients and how she strives to elevate the human connection - 13:49
• The importance Christin places on recognizing the fullness of the humanity within each patient - 21:16
• The power of hope for patients facing serious illnesses - 31:50
• What it was like to serve as a frontline worker in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic - 36:38
• Advice on how to stay connected to the most meaningful aspects of a healthcare profession, even in the darkest times - 40:47

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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In medicine, we are trained to fight for life — to extend it, preserve it and restore it. But sometimes the goal shifts from curing to comforting. That, in brief, is the essence of palliative care. It compels us to ask what it means to truly care for a person at the end of life, not as a failure of medicine but as a profound act of love. 

In this episode, we enter a space where time slows down, where every moment is cherished, and where medicine is tantamount to presence, dignity, and grace. George Mark Children's House in California is the first freestanding pediatric palliative care center in the United States, a place where children with serious, life-limiting conditions can spend their time in a home-like setting and live fully, where families find respite, and where end-of-life care is infused with humanity and meaning. It's a place that helps families navigate one of the hardest journeys imaginable, offering not just medical support, but also emotional and spiritual care. 

Joining us is Shekinah Eliassen, CEO of George Mark Children's House, who has dedicated her life to reimagining how we care for children with complex and terminal illnesses. She opens up about how the loss of her first son drives her work to this day. We'll explore the essence of pediatric palliative care, the misconceptions, the difficult conversations, the small joys, and the profound impact of honoring life, no matter how brief. This is a conversation about medicine at its most intimate and compassionate.

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

2:53 - The family tragedy that introduced Eliassen to George Mark Children’s House

15:08 - Eliassen’s personal experience with pediatric palliative care and how her understanding has evolved

19:26 - How palliative care differs from physician aid in dying

23:21 -  George Mark Children’s House’s approach to pediatric palliative care 

28:09 - The importance of “savouring the moment”

37:04 - Limiting factors that currently prevent pediatric palliative care from expanding 

41:44 - The role that spirituality and religion play at George Mark Children’s House

48:17 -  Eliassen’s advice to her past self on how to prepare for the life-changing experience of child loss

Shekinah Eliassen can be found on Instagram at @shekinahceliassen.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Few would dispute that vision is just about our most important sense. From a neurophysiological perspective, more than half of the human brain is dedicated to processing vision. But beyond that, it also enables us to meaningfully interact with the world and the people around us, and allows us to engage in many of the activities that bring us joy in life. Joining us in this episode is Michael Marmor, MD, Professor Emeritus and former chair of ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition to his significant contributions to our understanding of diseases of the retina, Dr. Marmor is a patron of the arts who has published several books on vision and visual art. Over the course of our conversation, we discuss the fascinating inner workings of eyesight, how art appreciation can help create better doctors, and how Dr. Marmor accompanies patients facing vision loss.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How a desire to “wear multiple hats” — researcher, surgeon, educator — led Dr. Marmor to ophthalmology - 2:04
• A brief exploration of the sense of sight - 4:01
• Dr. Marmor’s research on the retina and why he believes a thorough understanding of how diseases work is critical for physicians caring for patients - 8:07
• Why helping a patient understand their condition provides comfort, even with serious illnesses - 11:53
• Dr. Marmor’s passion for the fine arts and how his expertise in vision complemented this passion - 18:23
• What art appreciation can do for physicians and how it gives us new ways of thinking and seeing - 23:52
• How medical curricula can be improved to integrate the arts and humanities, and the importance of an emphasis on breadth in addition to technical depth - 33:06
• Why an appreciation for all kinds of art keeps us in touch with culture -  46:29

Dr. Marmor is the author of several books on art, including The Eye of the Artist (1996), Degas Through His Own Eyes: Visual Disability and the Late Style of Degas (2006), and The Artist’s Eyes (2009).

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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When it comes to medical humanitarianism, there is no bigger name than Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known in English as Doctors Without Borders. MSF is renowned for its work in regions affected by armed conflict, endemic diseases, and natural disasters. In this episode, we are joined by Cristos Christou, MD, a Greek surgeon who has served as the international president of MSF since 2019. As a field doctor, he has worked in South Sudan, Iraq, Cameroon, and various other conflict zones. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Christou takes us into the trenches of his medical work in caring for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, shares how he finds meaning and hope amid the depths of human suffering, and discusses the challenges to global health today.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How the values of his self-described “rustic” childhood led Dr. Christou into medicine - 2:28
• How Dr. Christou’s time in university shaped his life philosophy - 3:27
• The history and mission of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders - 5:59
• What it is like to practice medicine in regions affected by armed conflict and natural disasters - 8:13
• Dr. Christou’s journey in MSF, from when he first heard of it to how he became its leader - 10:42
• Lessons learned on finding meaning in medicine in some of the most resource-limited settings - 13:41
• Dr. Christou’s stories of inspiring hope in patients even during incredibly challenging times - 16:19
• A discussion of the dangers faced by clinicians who work with MSF - 19:54
• The significance of bearing witness to suffering in giving a voice to vulnerable patients - 23:11
• A discussion of the major threats to global health today: climate change, epidemics, and war - 26:25
• Advice for new clinicians who wish to tackle issues in global health - 30:00

Follow Dr. Christos on Twitter @DrChristou.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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While digital technologies now permeate nearly every aspect of our lives, their application to improve medicine remains limited. Still, recent advances in artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and other technologies hold enormous potential to transform how healthcare is delivered. At the forefront of exploring this potential is Justin Norden, MD, MBA, a physician and investor at the venture capital firm GSR Ventures, where he focuses on investments in digital health companies. With a background in computer science, Dr. Norden previously worked on the healthcare team at Apple and helped launch the Center for Digital Health at Stanford University. He joins us in conversation to discuss how he discovered investing and entrepreneurship as a way to tackle problems in medicine, clarify misconceptions about digital health and venture capital, and explore how technologies are shaping the future of medicine.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• A brief introduction to venture capital - 1:48
• How Dr. Norden’s experiences during medical training led him explore entrepreneurship and healthcare investing - 3:22
• How Dr. Norden’s passion for computer science influenced his medical education - 7:30
• What it was like to leave a clinical career - 10:18
• The past and current state of technological advancement in medicine - 20:28
• Co-host Dr. Johnson’s concerns over the ways technology has, at times, impeded the delivery of health care - 28:38
• Dr. Norden’s vision for the ideal balance between humanism and technology in medicine - 34:31
• How Dr. Norden considers the reconciliation between the profit motive of companies and the preservation of what makes medicine meaningful - 38:28
• How Dr. Norden decides which digital health companies to invest in - 44:57
• Advice to young clinicians who are curious about healthcare innovation - 50:09

Follow Dr. Norden on Twitter @JustinNordenMD.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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As one of the most prolific and acclaimed physician writers today, Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD is the author of seven books on the intricacies of modern medical practice and the doctor-patient relationship. Her other writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, in addition to various leading medical journals. She is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, a literary journal that publishes works focusing on the human body, illness, and health. In her writings, Dr. Ofri uses vivid narratives to shed light on the highs and lows of being a doctor. In this episode, she joins us to share her path to medicine, how doctors can mitigate the moral injury they experience in their work, and how storytelling can comfort us in times of suffering.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How Dr. Ofri was initially drawn to internal medicine through the patient stories she encountered - 1:54
• A discussion of the tension between the business and art of medicine - 6:07
• Dr. Ofri’s advice on how clinicians can combat the moral corrosion that broken medical systems can induce - 11:29
• How Dr. Ofri’s medical residency during the AIDS epidemic led to her passion for writing - 16:33
• Dr. Ofri’s writing process - 23:30
• A discussion of the moral philosophy of medicine and why doctors do what they do - 27:09
• Dr. Ofri reflections on how her writing has impacted her clinical practice - 31:47
• The wisdom that physicians who encounter suffering every day can share with a world experiencing collective grief from the COVID-19 pandemic - 34:38
• A discussion of the emotional toll on clinicians of delivering bad news and confronting grief, and an exploration of guilt and shame - 42:25
• Dr. Ofri’s advice to clinicians on how to stay connected to meaning in medicine - 48:44

Dr. Danielle Ofri is the author of the following books on being a doctor:
Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error

What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear

Medicine in Translation

Intensive Care: A Doctor’s Journey

Incidental Findings

Follow Dr. Ofri on Twitter @DanielleOfri.

This episode included an excerpt from Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim’s performance of the Cello Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99 by Johannes Brahms, recorded live in West Berlin in 1968.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified the five stages of dying in her book On Death and Dying. Her work has radically transformed the way we think and talk about grief and loss, giving us a shared vocabulary and understanding of a previously murky, yet universal, human experience. Towards the end of her life, Kübler-Ross worked closely with David Kessler, with whom she co-authored several books and formally adapted the stages of dying into the stages of grief. Today, David is the world’s foremost expert on grief and has taught health care workers, counselors, and first responders on facing death and loss. His writings and his website Grief.com have reached millions of people. In this episode, David joins us to share his personal experiences with loss and what his decades of helping those on the edge of death have taught him about finding meaning amid suffering, and happiness after tragedy.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Thanatology — the study of death and dying — and what drew David to this field - 2:10
• Kessler’s friendship with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist best known for developing the five stages of dying - 6:06
• How physicians are often ill-equipped to face death and how hey might better engage with dying patients - 11:22
• David’s advice to physicians on finding meaning amid loss and tragedy - 19:05
• A review of the five stages of dying/grief - 28:58
• On Meaning, the sixth stage of grief that David developed - 33:38
• How the pandemic saw a renewed interest in grief management, and how his interview with the Harvard Business Review entitled “The Discomfort You Are Feeling is Grief” went viral - 38:04
• How David manages the overwhelming sadness he sometimes experiences in his line of work - 43:54
• David’s advice to physicians on comforting grieving patients - 48:31

David Kessler is the author of several books, including The Needs of the Dyingand Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, as well as Life Lessons and On Grief and Grieving with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who is herself the noted author of On Death and Dying.

Follow David Kessler on Twitter @IamDavidKessler.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you know anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Advances in modern medicine mean a greater proportion of people today than ever before will live well into old age. Despite the seemingly encouraging trend, geriatrician Louise Aronson, MD, MFA argues that we have made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Dr. Aronson has made it her life's work to help us reimagine the rich possibilities of human longevity and of later life. Her bestselling book, Elderhood, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In this episode, Dr. Aronson explains what makes geriatrics a meaningful career for her, discusses the faults in our society’s conception of elderhood, and shares her humane and hopeful vision for the future of aging.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• An overview of what geriatrics entails - 1:47
• The need to recognize elderhood as distinct a life stage - 4:42
• Dr. Aronson’s reflections on what drew her into caring for older patients - 6:15
• The ways goals of care change in elderhood - 8:24
• Dr. Aronson’s approach to caring for her patients holistically - 13:27
• How physicians can change the “losers and winners” paradigm in healthcare - 17:34
• A discussion of structural and cultural ageism and the insidious ways it harms our society - 23:03
• How American culture and medicine elevates patient autonomy and how this can sometimes be harmful to older patients - 30:59
• A discussion of Dr. Aronson’s writing and what motivated her to become an author - 38:49
• How Dr. Aronson experienced and overcame burnout - 42:57
• Advice to new clinicians on how to connect with patients and create a more meaningful career path - 46:08

Dr. Aronson is the author of the nonfiction book Elderhood and the short story collection A History of the Present Illness, as well as several essays and articles on ageism and aging and a blog.

Follow Dr. Louise Arondson on Twitter @LouiseAronson, Instagram @LouiseAronsonSF, and LinkedIn.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2022

On June 28, 2022, we released an episode featuring Ellen Dunphy, a 35-year old patient with a terminal diagnosis of gastric cancer who had been under the care of co-host Dr. Tyler Johnson. Ellen passed away a week later. Accompanying every step on her cancer journey was her husband, Andy Clinnin. In this episode, Andy joins us to share his experiences as Ellen’s caregiver and primary source of emotional support. Over the course of our conversation, we explore Andy and Ellen’s relationship from its beginnings all the way to her final days and after. Andy’s reflections on these challenging moments, perhaps paradoxically, has much to teach us about what it looks like to courageously make the most of life, however much of it remains. 

In this episode, you will hear about:

• A synopsis of how Ellen came to be in Dr. Johnson’s care - 1:03
• How Andy and Ellen met, and their relationship leading up to her diagnosis - 6:44
• Andy’s perspective on Ellen’s diagnosis - 10:15
• What it was like for Andy to learn about Ellen’s diagnosis and how he adjusted to being her caregiver - 16:26
• Andy’s reflections on the experience of having Dr. Johnson as Ellen’s oncologist - 21:39
• How Andy helped Ellen think through her priorities at the end-of-life - 27:15
• How being with his partner until the end has changed the way Andy sees life - 35:46
• How California’s End of Life Treatment Act allowed Ellen to control how her life story ended - 43:14
• Andy’s advice for other caregivers on how to best take care of themselves so they may best provide care to their loved ones - 51:33 

Ellen Dunphy’s one-woman play “Imaginary Endings” about facing her cancer diagnosis can be viewed on YouTube.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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What should we do about the fact that a person's health is affected in large part by social factors beyond the confines of the hospital? For a long time, traditional health care institutions have been inadequate in answering this question. Joining us in this episode is Toyin Ajayi, MD, MPhil, co-founder and chief executive officer of Cityblock Health, a tech-driven health care provider for communities with complex health and social needs. With a focus on Medicaid and lower income Medicare beneficiaries, Cityblock Health has been widely recognized as an exemplar of a sustainable model of care delivery for marginalized populations. We are pleased to be joined by Dr. Ajayi to discuss Cityblock Health as well as her clinical work, which centers on patients with chronic complex and end-of-life needs.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Ajayi’s personal journey from growing up in Kenya to leading Cityblock Health - 1:57
• Why Dr. Ajayi chose to focus her career on patients with complex and chronic health needs - 4:11
• The social determinants of health and its impact on a patient’s ability to seek appropriate medical care - 5:21
• Dr. Ajayi’s story of a chronically-ill patient who appeared ‘difficult’ but in truth was suffering from social inequities that limited his access to health care - 10:35
• A discussion of Cityblock Health, the value-based healthcare provider that Dr. Ajayi co-founded to provide care to the Medicaid patient population - 18:07
• The stigmas around Medicaid patients and why Dr. Ajayi sees opportunities instead of barriers  - 22:02
• An in-depth exploration of the services Cityblock Health provides - 27:00
• The challenges of the fee-for-service model of American healthcare, and how Cityblock seeks to address them - 32:36
• Dr. Ajayi’s advice to medical practitioners on how to build trust and rapport with their patients - 37:50
• The future of Cityblock Health and the health equity movement - 40:05

Follow Dr. Toyin Ajayi on Twitter @ToyinAjayiDoc and Cityblock Health @CityblockHealth

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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The Human Genome Project was a 13 year long international effort to map and sequence all of the genes in the human genome. Leading this ambitious endeavor was Francis Collins, MD, PhD, who was also Director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021. His work has had a far-reaching impact on our understanding of diseases and the development of new therapies. In addition to being one of the foremost physician scientists of our time, Dr. Collins is also well known for his bold defense of his Christian faith and for his steadfast promotion of dialogue between science and religion. His book, The Language of God, was an international bestseller. In this episode, Dr. Collins joins us to share his remarkable path in medicine, the origins and evolution of his faith, and his perspectives on the moral mission of medicine.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• A close personal look at Dr. Collins’ career, leading to his directorship of the Human Genome Project - 1:56
• The mission and implications of the Human Genome Project - 10:02
• The cultural upheaval that has occurred during Dr. Collins’ lifetime and the way popular culture tends to pit science and faith against each other - 15:25
• The origin of BioLogos and its mission to foster a community that strives to harmonize science and Christian faith - 24:47
• A brief discussion of Intelligent Design, a movement that aims to prove the existence of God through science, and how it differs from BioLogos - 28:26
• Dr. Collins’ reflections on the reconciliation between his faith in God and the human suffering he has witnessed throughout his career - 32:42
• Advice on finding meaning and fulfillment in both life and work, and how community can help combat burnout - 40:38

Dr. Francis Collins is the author of The Language of God  and the founder Biologos.org.

Dr. Collins references The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewisas being particularly enlightening to his personal worldview

Dr. Collins was recently interviewed by Science.org about his time leading the National Institutes of Health

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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With around 63 million beneficiaries, Medicare is the single largest provider of health insurance in the United States, serving Americans aged 65 or older, as well as some younger patients who have certain disabilities. Directing this massive program is Meena Seshamani, MD, PhD, an otolaryngologist and former Vice President of Clinical Care Transformation at MedStar Health, a large health care organization primarily operating in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. There, she led initiatives in palliative care, geriatrics, and community health. She has also served as Director of the Office of Health Reform at the US Department of Health and Human Services. In this episode, Dr. Seshamani discusses her path from surgeon to health policy leader, what draws her to caring for older adults, and her vision for a better, more sustainable health care of the future.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Seshamani’s enthusiasm for medicine at a young age and the diverse career trajectory that followed - 2:08
• A discussion of Dr. Seshamani’s past leadership roles, including those at the Office of Health Reform under the Obama administration and at MedStar Health - 6:27
• Balancing the need for clinicians to work collaboratively and the inclination of physicians to value autonomy - 10:20
• An explanation of Medicare’s role in the US healthcare ecosystem - 14:51
• What draws Dr. Seshamani to focus on the care of older adults - 17:39
• The crisis of burnout in the medical profession and Dr. Seshamani’s vision for how this can be addressed - 21:00
• The fee-for-service mechanism of healthcare reimbursement, accountable care relationships, and the value of preventative care - 25:33
• The pay disparity between specialists and primary care physicians, and the role Medicare can play - 30:40
• How the growing population of aging Americans impacts the future sustainability of the Medicare program - 38:41
• How Medicare is reforming its allocation of resources to promote health equity - 42:02
• Dr. Seshamani’s advice to students and clinicians on engaging in meaningful work as they advance in their careers - 48:24

In this episode, we discuss the speech “Cowboys and Pit Crews” by Atul Gawande, published in the New Yorker.

You can follow Dr. Seshamani on Twitter @DrMeenaSesh

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Medicine is often framed as a meritocracy, where intelligence, hard work, and dedication dictate success. Yet, institutions of medicine are shaped by histories of exclusion, bias, and systemic inequities. And for clinicians coming from marginalized backgrounds, the journey is not just about learning the science. It's also about learning an entirely different set of rules — rules that are unspoken and unwritten, but deeply felt. 

For Damon Tweedy, MD, this struggle was deeply personal. Raised in a working class, all-black neighborhood, medicine once felt worlds away. Earning a spot at Duke Medical School was a milestone, but it came with new challenges. The paradox of being both visible and invisible; of constantly proving — sometimes subtly, sometimes forcefully — that he belonged. Dr. Tweedy talks about the paradox of striving to be “twice as good,” while still being mistaken for the janitor, turning down an invitation to play golf with faculty because he simply did not know the game, and realizing that for some of his classmates, medicine was not a leap into the unknown, but simply an inheritance. 

Beyond race, this episode is also about identity, resilience, and what happens when personal history collides with professional expectation. It's about how trust in medicine is built or broken not just for doctors, but for patients. Dr. Tweedy shares how his own experiences have shaped the way he interacts with patients, why he approaches conversations with more humility, and why sometimes the most important thing a doctor can do is simply acknowledge the weight that a patient carries into the exam room. Ultimately, this episode is about the search for authenticity in a system that often demands conformity.

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

3:24 - Dr. Tweedy’s path to medicine and his experience as a black first-generation college student 

14:08 - How Dr. Tweedy navigates experiences of being discriminated against as a black physician

24:58 - Dr. Tweedy’s approach to navigating discriminatory experiences between patients and trainees 

29:56 - Dr. Tweedy’s path to becoming a public voice regarding race and medicine 

32:07 - The current approach to teaching race and medicine in medical school, and Dr. Tweedy’s thoughts on how it can be improved.  

43:42 - Effectively serving patients of different racial backgrounds without falling into profiling or prejudice 

48:49 - Dr. Tweedy’s advice for new medical students 

Dr. Damon Tweedy is the author of Black Man in a White Coat (2016) and Facing the Unseen (2024).

Dr. Tweedy can be found on Twitter/X at @damontweedymd.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Pediatric neurosurgeons manage some of the most complex diseases in children, operating on the delicate and precious organ that makes us essentially human. Jay Wellons, MD is Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the author of All That Moves Us, a memoir that offers an intimate and gripping account of the triumphs, terrors, joys, and pathos he encounters on a daily basis. In this episode, Dr. Wellons joins us to discuss his path to neurosurgery by way of English literature and family medicine, his faith as an anchor amidst his challenging work, and reflections on what the human dramas involving the most vulnerable children he has cared for has taught him about resilience, courage, and grace under pressure.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• A discussion of the range of procedures pediatric neurosurgeons perform - 1:58
• How a fascination with neuroanatomy drew Dr. Wellons into neurosurgery, and how his literary studies have impacted his patient care - 3:58
• The origin of Dr. Wellons’ book All That Moves Us and his experiences with a personal health crisis - 8:59
• What it is like to operate on one of the most intricate and delicate parts of the human body - 18:00
• How Dr. Wellons deals with the weight of unsuccessful procedures, and how he carries on - 27:51
• Forming relationships with the families of very young and often very ill patients - 31:12
• A discussion of spiritual faith and its place in the life of a surgeon who sees so much tragedy - 35:27
• Dr. Wellons’ advice to students, trainees, and clinicians on how to stay connected and hopeful in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges - 40:52

Dr. Wellons is the author of a book All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience, as well as the article “How the Summer Camp Doctor Earned His Stripes ” for Garden & Gun magazine.

You can follow Dr. Jay Wellons on Twitter @JayWellons5

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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On New Year's Eve of 2020, at the age of 29, Katie Coleman was diagnosed with metastatic renal oncocytoma, a type of kidney cancer so rare that she is the only known case in the United States and one of only a handful around the world. The sheer uniqueness of her situation resulted in a prolonged course of prognostic and therapeutic uncertainty. Thanks to the work of oncologists at the National Cancer Institute and MD Anderson Cancer Center, Katie is now in remission. Today, she is a patient advocate who passionately supports other patients through their cancer journeys. In this episode, Katie joins us to share her incredible story, her experiences with grief, uncertainty, and hope, and her lessons learned on finding joy and meaning in life.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Katie’s backstory and the events leading up to her diagnosis - 1:50
• The experience of being diagnosed with one of the rarest cancers in the world - 3:58
• How Katie’s oncologists discussed this unusual diagnosis with her - 10:42
• The experience of receiving treatment with the goal of prolonging life, rather than curing the disease - 13:06
• How co-host Dr. Tyler Johnson communicates issues of serious illness with his patients - 15:38
• How the uncertainty around a terminal cancer prognosis impacts the way patients approach living their lives - 22:21
• How Katie’s changing prognoses have altered her life plans - 28:53
• The wisdom on living well one gains from facing a life-limiting illness - 34:32
• Lessons on hope in the face of uncertainty - 39:55
• The various ways clinicians can open up and connect with their patients on a human level - 44:14

Katie’s story has been profiled by the National Cancer Institute, NBC News, and the Today Show.

You can follow Katie on Twitter @KayDAustin

Katie is also an active content creator and patient advocate on Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Technological advancements have enabled us to accomplish medical miracles through novel medical devices, algorithms, and digital tools. At the same time, the exponential entanglement of tech with healthcare has led many clinicians to feel disconnected from the human element of medicine. Here to discuss this conundrum is Bryant Lin, MD, MEng, the director of Medicine and the Muse, the medical humanities program at Stanford Medical School, and a mechanical engineer by training who focuses on medical device development. Dr. Lin also conducts research in Asian population health and is the cofounder of Stanford’s Consultative Medicine Clinic, which evaluates patients with medical mysteries. In today’s episode, Dr. Lin shares his unique perspective at the crossroads of technology and the humanities, and discusses how storytelling can be a powerful instrument to keep physicians grounded in what truly matters for their patients.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How an early interest in engineering led Dr. Lin to medicine - 1:42
• A poignant letter Dr. Lin received from one of his long-term aging patients that reaffirms why his medical career is meaningful - 4:10
• A discussion of how medical bureaucratization has stolen away much of the human connection that underpins fulfilling medical work - 7:39
• How Medicine and the Muse, the medical humanities program at Stanford, helps clinicians connect with the meaning in medicine - 12:40
• What Dr. Lin hopes to achieve through teaching medical humanities to future clinicians - 25:45
• How storytelling helps healthcare providers better connect with their patients - 27:28
• How Dr. Lin integrates storytelling into medical device design, and why it is imperative to not allow technology to distance physicians from their patients - 31:24

Dr. Lin manages the forthcoming digital medical humanities newsletter Panacea Health. 

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Rana Awdish, MD was on the last day of her critical care medicine training when her life changed forever. Seven months pregnant at the time, Dr. Awdish abruptly found herself in a life threatening crisis when a previously undiagnosed liver tumor suddenly ruptured. She was rushed to the ICU of her own hospital, where she came unimaginably close to death multiple times. Despite this tragic event, she survived thanks to the incredible work of her medical team. Today, Dr. Awdish is the author of the acclaimed memoir In Shock, which recounts her time as an ICU patient. She is also the Medical Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and Medical Director of Care Experience for the Henry Ford Health System. In this episode, she shares what she has learned from her experiences about compassion, hope, and improving empathetic communication in health care. 

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How a family ailment inspired Dr. Awdish to pursue a medical career - 2:10
• An riveting personal account of the catastrophic medical event that befell Dr. Awdish - 4:17
• A discussion of the learning curve in medicine and the need to create safe spaces for physicians to admit ignorance - 12:13
• The fascinating and unsettling experience of being a highly-trained physician and a critically-ill patient at the same time, and how this experience showed her the way our current medical culture disempowers patients - 15:17
• Dr. Awdish’s reflections on the antagonistic environment of her prolonged hospital stay - 20:19
• A discussion of hope, concept often misunderstood by physicians as running counter to realistic expectations - 27:37
• The intense and unexpected role of spirituality in Dr. Awdish’s critical care experience - 32:14
• Navigating the medical profession while confronting suffering and not burning out - 34:37
• A discussion of Dr. Awdish’s profound essay The Shape of the Shore about the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Detroit - 37:36
• Dr. Awdish’s advice to new physicians and students to help them stay connected to their work and to see the humanity in their patients - 44:33

Dr. Rana Awdish is the author of:

In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope, a memoir about the harrowing events discussed in this episode and the revelations she attained by going through them.

The Shape of the Shore, an essay about working in the ICU during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Johnson mentions the essay The Learning Curve by Dr. Atul Gawande.

Follow Dr. Awdish on Twitter @RanaAwdish.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2022

Imagine showing up for work every day for a year, knowing full well that each day you risk contracting a potentially devastating disease with unknown long-term consequences. That's exactly what Thomas Fisher, MD went through, as he documents vividly in his recent book, The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago E.R., which delves into what it was like fighting COVID-19 on the frontlines in 2020. Dr. Fisher, an emergency physician at the University of Chicago Medical Center, former healthcare executive, and former White House Fellow, has dedicated his life to caring for his community, the black population of Chicago's South Side. In this episode, he recounts harrowing stories from the emergency room, gives an impassioned critique of a health care system with too little space for doctors to provide the care their patients need, and shares a renewed vision of healthcare as a foundation of social justice.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• What motivated Dr. Fisher to write his book, The Emergency, a riveting first-hand account of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic - 2:09
• The uncertainty and terror physicians faced at very beginning of the pandemic - 5:29
• An intimate picture of how emergency physicians approached the first COVID-19 patients - 9:45
• How an upbringing in Chicago’s South Side propelled Dr. Fisher into a career in healthcare, and how the reality of inequitable systems has shaped his medical practice - 13:10
• A discussion of the concept of “heroism” in the context of frontline healthcare workers - 20:35
• How Dr. Fisher used letters addressed to patients as a narrative device in his book to explore social injustices that affect individual health - 30:50
• Dr. Fisher’s reflections on maintaining a connection to the meaning of his work despite the seemingly insurmountable systemic challenges that he recognizes - 35:57
• Practical advice for clinicians on making space for patient care within a rushed healthcare environment - 42:28

Dr. Fisher is the author of The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago E.R.

Follow Dr. Fisher on Twitter @TFisherMD.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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What is it like to comfort patients in the moments before they surrender consciousness to undergo surgery? What can the humanities teach us about being present for a patient when they are at their most vulnerable? As an anesthesiologist and founding director of Medicine and the Muse, Stanford Medicine’s health humanities program, Audrey Shafer, MD has spent her career pondering and addressing these questions. In this episode, Dr. Shafer discusses how her exploits in the humanities have shaped her career in medicine, gives us an intimate and vivid picture of the vital work anesthesiologists do, and shares what her recent personal experiences with cancer have taught her about what it means to truly care for patients.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How growing up in an artistic household initially pushed Dr. Shafer away from the arts and toward a medical career - 1:51
• Why Dr. Shafer chose to become an anesthesiologist - 5:51
• Dr. Shafer’s discovery of the medical humanities and how she would later create the first program of its type at Stanford Medicine - 8:57
• A discussion of what the medical humanities are and a defense of its value - 12:00
• Reflections on the profound privilege of being an anesthesiologist and a medical educator - 17:45
• A behind-the-scenes look at an anesthesiologist’s work - 25:02
• Dr. Shafer’s recent cancer diagnosis and her treatment journey - 34:29
• Advice for clinicians and medical students about seeing patients’ illnesses within the greater context of their lives - 41:15

Follow Dr. Shafer on Twitter @AudreyShafer.

You can peruse the Literature Arts & Medicine magazine here.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Born with hemophilia in a time before effective therapies existed and having experienced treatment complications including hepatitis C and HIV, Eric Winer, MD spent much of his childhood and young adulthood in and out of the hospital. Today, he is the Director of Yale Cancer Center and President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the largest organization of clinicians caring for cancer patients. An internationally renowned expert in breast cancer, his research has immensely impacted how breast cancer is now treated. In this episode, Dr. Winer shares his path to oncology and his insights from being a lifelong patient on stigma, compassion, and empathy.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How growing up with hemophilia led Dr. Winer to the field of medicine - 1:50
• The patient that cemented Dr. Winer’s dedication to oncology as his life’s work - 7:55
• Dr. Winer’s reflections on how his experiences as a patient shape his work as a doctor - 12:52
• Facing the reality of caring for patients with terminal illness - 18:21
• How Dr. Winer grounds the care he provides in the humanism of each patient - 23:49
• Dr. Winer’s mission and vision as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology - 25:49
• How leading by example is critical to cultivating a strong, respectful, and collaborative institutional culture - 31:02
• Dr. Winer’s advice to medical students and new clinicians on maintaining a connection to meaningful work - 33:12

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Our modern world grants us unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli—not just drugs, but also food, news, shopping, sex, gaming, social media, gambling, and more. But psychiatrist Anna Lembke, MD argues that this society-wide overindulgence in pleasure threatens to lead us to deeper pain. Dr. Lembke is the director of the Addiction Medicine Service at Stanford Medicine and is the author of two bestselling books, Dopamine Nation and Drug Dealer, MD. As one of the first doctors to sound the alarm on the opioid epidemic in America, she's an expert on the issue and has advised policymakers at the highest levels of government. In this episode, Dr. Lembke describes her work treating all kinds of addiction, discusses her deep concern with the overconsumption of pleasure in our culture, and shares what we can all do to renew meaning and connectedness in our lives through balancing pain and pleasure.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• What first drew Dr. Lembke to a medical career and how she initially discovered psychiatry - 2:13
• Why Dr. Lembke dedicates herself to addiction medicine, and how her philosophy can help others find meaningful work - 9:16
• The historical shift, with the advent of the opioid epidemic, to understanding addiction as a medical condition instead of a moral or personal failing - 12:53
• Reframing addiction as a medical diagnosis and approaching patients facing addictive disorders with compassion - 17:58
• How flaws in contemporary medical practice and misaligned incentives for doctors contributed to the opioid crisis - 24:15
• A discussion of Dr. Lemke’s book Dopamine Nation, including how easy access to pleasure causes addictagenic responses in nearly every aspect of our lives - 29:32
• How humans can reconnect with meaning despite living in a culture that often substitutes meaning with cheap pleasure - 34:15
• Dr. Lembke’s advice to all clinicians for how to better connect with patients - 45:20

Tyler refers to the essay “I Used to be a Human Being” by Andrew Sullivan.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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What happens when miscommunication between a doctor and patient leads to intractable conflict? What happens when a patient requests an intervention a doctor does not feel ethically comfortable with? In the toughest of situations, doctors turn to the clinical ethicist for help. David Magnus, PhD, an internationally regarded leader in clinical ethics, is the director of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Bioethics, and former president of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors. In this episode, Dr. Magnus shares lessons learned from the most ethically ambiguous scenarios he has managed, the importance of ethical thinking skills for all clinicians, and the difficulties inherent in clinician-patient communication.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• What it’s like to be a clinical ethicist, handling the tough ethical questions doctors call on them to resolve - 5:05
• How an ethicist determines what is “right” in a given circumstance - 9:10
• How Dr. Magnus’ deals with patients who refuse to accept his recommendations for care - 11:33
• Dr. Magnus’s journey from professor of philosophy to leading thinker on medical ethics - 14:00
• How the intense specialization of modern medicine may be contributing to clinician burnout - 23:31
• How misinterpretation of language can be a major barrier to good health care - 32:25
• Why clinicians use “hedge language” and “shield attributions” and how they can dramatically alter a patient’s understanding of their situation - 40:46
• Dr. Magnus’s advice to new clinicians on cultivating skills in ethical thinking and responsible patient communication - 50:45

Learn more about the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities here.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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As former CEO of the Permanente Medical Group, Robert Pearl, MD was responsible for the work of 50,000 healthcare workers and the medical care of 5 million Americans through Kaiser Permanente hospitals across the country. A leading expert on healthcare management and strategy, Dr. Pearl is the author of two bestselling books, “Mistreated: Why We Think We’re Getting Good Healthcare–And Why We’re Usually Wrong” and “Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients,” a regular contributor to Forbes, and the host of several popular medical podcasts. He is a board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon, clinical professor at Stanford Medicine, and lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In this episode, Dr. Pearl shares his thoughts on why American healthcare is failing not only patients but also physicians, and what we can do to address inherent problems in the culture of medicine.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Pearl’s journey to a career in plastic surgery - 2:13
• Grappling with complications that arise during surgery - 9:40
• Dr. Pearl’s transition from surgeon to CEO of the Permanente Medical Group - 12:49
• The mission that Dr. Pearl brought to his role as CEO and how he implemented that mission - 17:21
• How Dr. Pearl paved a path for increasing both the quality of care and physician satisfaction, while keeping costs low, and why so often these goals seem at odds with each other - 20:32
• The toxic culture of denial in medicine and why it is killing doctors and patients - 27:45
• How status and compensation disparity contributes to physician burnout, and what to do about it - 35:47
• Dr. Pearl’s administrative strategy that led Kaiser Permanente to much success during his tenure as CEO - 43:08
• Dr. Pearl’s advice to physicians on how to stay connected and empowered in their careers - 46:38

Dr. Robert Pearl is:

• Author of two books: Mistreated: Why We Think We’re Getting Good Healthcare - And Why We’re Usually Wrong; and Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders
• A frequent contributor to Forbes Magazine 
• The host of two podcasts: Fixing Healthcare and Coronavirus: The Truth

Find more information at RobertPearlMD.com or follow Dr. Pearl on Twitter @RobertPearlMD

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2022

Physicians are trained to diagnose and treat disease, but they're not always taught how to lead. Yet in an era of increasing administrative burdens, evolving healthcare policies, and growing physician burnout, leadership skills have never been more essential. How can physicians reclaim their voices in healthcare decision making? What makes an effective physician leader in today's complex landscape? 

Here to answer these questions is Peter Angood, MD, President and CEO of the American Association for Physician Leadership, an organization dedicated to empowering physicians with the tools and strategies to lead successfully. With years of experience as a trauma surgeon and a leader of patient safety at organizations ranging from The Joint Commission to the World Health Organization, Dr. Angood has thought deeply about expanding the role of physicians beyond the bedside.

Over the course of our conversation. Dr. Angood first takes us into the mind of a trauma surgeon dealing with split-second life-or-death decisions, then discusses the evolving role of physician leadership, trends that concern and excite him about modern healthcare, and concrete skills all clinicians can develop to lead meaningful changes.

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

2:23 - How Dr. Angood became drawn to a career in medicine 

5:58 - The day-to-day experience of a trauma surgeon 

18:39 - How Dr. Angood expanded his role beyond the operating room

21:44 - The role of the Joint Commission

23:02 - Finding the balance between patient safety, teamwork, and physician autonomy 

31:37 - Dr. Angood’s leadership philosophy 

41:40 - Why all physicians should be seen as leaders

43:45 - Dr. Angood’s advice for how to be successful in a leadership role 

53:57 - Dr. Angood’s advice for new clinicians 

Dr. Angood is the author of Inspiring Growth and Leadership in Medical Careers: Transform Healthcare as a Physician Leader (2024) and All Physicians are Leaders: Reflections on Inspiring Change Together for Better Healthcare (2020). 

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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As the real-life inspiration for and medical consultant to the popular TV show "House, M.D.," journalist-turned-physician Lisa Sanders, MD has played quite the role in elevating the prestige and drama of medical diagnosis. For the past 20 years, Dr. Sanders has written a column in the New York Times titled "Diagnosis," in which she discusses bizarre and fascinating medical cases. In 2019, this column was turned into a Netflix documentary series of the same name. She has garnered much acclaim for presenting the process of diagnosis as a detective story, rather than the rote recall of a set of facts and figures. Dr. Sanders joins us in this episode to speak about her remarkable career path, her work, and how storytelling contributes to patient healing.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Dr. Sanders’ career prior to medicine as a TV journalist and how it influenced her path as a physician - 1:59
• Dr. Sanders’ revelation about diagnosis as detective work and how she developed her passion for it - 4:59
• Being part of the handful of “weirdos” that Yale Medical School admits every year, and combating imposter syndrome - 7:14
• Dr. Sanders’ reflections on the how money-making impacts physician burnout and how the burden of choice in medical career paths may lead to a sense of disconnect - 12:39
• Medical diagnosis itself as a kind of healing, allowing patients to contextualize their circumstances within their personal narratives - 18:05
• Dr. Sanders’ best-practices on communicating with patients - 29:03
• The methodology of solving and describing medical mysteries - 32:10
• Challenges and opportunities in eliciting and listening to patient stories - 42:16
• Dr. Sanders’ hope that the human dimension of medicine does not get displaced by the technical dimension, and why storytelling is integral to patient healing - 46:41

Dr. Lisa Sanders is the author of several books, including 

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis (2009), and

Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries (2019)

She writes a column for the New York Times called Diagnosis, which can be found archived here

Follow Dr. Sanders on Twitter @LisaSandersmd

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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When actress and playwright Ellen Dunphy — then a robustly-healthy 33-year old — first met co-host Dr. Tyler Johnson in early 2020, they were filming an educational video teaching doctors how to discuss terminal illnesses with patients. Six months later, in a twist of fate, upon receiving a terminal diagnosis of gastric cancer, Ellen learned that Dr. Johnson would be her oncologist — for real this time. In this poignant episode, Ellen candidly shares her experiences from the moment she received her diagnosis to how she has subsequently grappled with grief, and discusses how this has fueled the creation of a play about her cancer journey. This is a rare occasion of conversation and reflection between a dying patient and her doctor on what matters most in medicine.

We note with sadness that Ellen passed away peacefully on July 4, 2022, surrounded by people who loved her.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• The circumstances that first brought Ellen and Dr. Johnson together - 1:38
• Ellen and Tyler’s second meeting, under drastically different yet parallel circumstances - 5:03
• What it was like for both Ellen and Dr. Johnson at the moment her diagnosis was delivered - 7:24
• What was surprising to Ellen about going through cancer treatment - 13:24
• Ellen’s advice to medical professionals in light of her own treatment journey - 16:40
• Ellen’s reflections on the process of writing her play about receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis - 21:12
• The meaning of medicine, as seen by Ellen - 27:45
• Ellen’s advice to all patients on the importance of advocating for oneself - 29:00

Ellen’s one-woman play “Imaginary Endings” about facing her cancer diagnosis can be viewed on YouTube.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

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Essayist Emily Maloney offers a wholly unique vantage point when it comes to American healthcare. At 19 years old, a suicide attempt landed Emily in the hospital for an extended stay, which then saddled her with a massive 5-figure load of unexpected medical bills. In an attempt to pay off her debt, Emily became an emergency room technician and began working in the very same system that was crippling her financial life. In today’s episode, Emily discusses her experiences as both patient and caregiver, and shares her insights on the true cost – financial and personal – that the flawed US medical system exerts on everyone involved, from patients to physicians.  

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Emily’s motivation for writing her recently published book of essays, “Cost of Living”  - 2:33
• How finding herself in suffocating medical debt changed Emily’s life  - 10:24
• Why the true costs of medical interventions are impossible to know under the current system -  18:20
• What drew Emily into the medical profession despite her negative experiences as a patient - 24:43
• Emily’s ideas on how healthcare in the US should be reformed - 37:28

Emily is the author of the essay collection “Cost of Living”

Follow Emily on Twitter @emilyfmaloney

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.

Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2022