2 - Uncertainty in Medicine: Looking with Uncertainty with Alexa Miller
The Nocturnists
Emily Silverman
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Step inside Alexa Miller's classroom, where paintings become portals and doctors learn to see like patients. In this episode, Alexa leads a powerful exercise called the "image circle," where clinicians reflect on their own experiences of medical uncertainty and choose artworks that speak to those moments. What follows is anything but abstract—through close looking and deep conversation, participants begin to feel what it's like to sit on the other side of the exam table. Alexa, a trailblazer at the crossroads of art and medicine, shares frameworks for understanding uncertainty and introduces her BOLD framework for navigating uncertainty in healthcare.
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The "Uncertainty in Medicine" series is generously funded by the ABIM Foundation, by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.
The Nocturnists is supported by The California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.
Host: Emily Silverman, MD
Uncertainty Correspondent: Alexa Miller
Series Illustrations by Eleni Debo
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey Nocturnist listeners. If you like immersive, powerful storytelling, then take a listen to Overlooked. |
| 0:06.5 | It's a podcast that features personal stories which bring the women's health gap to life. |
| 0:11.8 | It's hosted by me, Golda Arthur, and you might say I've got skin in the game. |
| 0:16.5 | On the show, we've covered topics like ovarian cancer, endometriosis, cervical screening, |
| 0:22.0 | and funding from women's health research. |
| 0:24.3 | You'll learn more and understand better, just as I do when I talk to women who tell me their |
| 0:29.7 | stories. |
| 0:31.2 | You can listen to Overlooked on your favorite podcast app or head to overlookedpod.com for more. |
| 0:40.1 | Support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical Association. |
| 0:44.4 | At the Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws. |
| 0:49.4 | Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. |
| 0:52.9 | All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer. |
| 0:57.6 | Welcome. |
| 0:58.4 | It is so great to see you guys. |
| 1:00.5 | This is Alexa Miller, our uncertainty correspondent. |
| 1:03.9 | What we're going to do today is look closely at some works of art that were selected by a group of medical students I was recently |
| 1:13.6 | working with. |
| 1:15.2 | She's the first guest for our uncertainty profile series as part of uncertainty in medicine. |
| 1:20.0 | This is one of my favorite exercises. It's called an image circle. |
| 1:24.3 | Alexa has been working for over 20 years as an educator at the intersection of |
| 1:28.8 | diagnosis, visual art, and uncertainty competence in medicine. |
| 1:32.9 | Where students first write about the experience of uncertainty as a patient, and then they |
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