Choosing Home with Tiffany Chan, OD
The Nocturnists
Emily Silverman
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tiffany Chan shares how her journey from a small-town family optometry practice to high-intensity academic medicine at Johns Hopkins was transformed when her mother suffered a major brain bleed, drawing her back home to care for her family. Ultimately, her mother's recovery, later passing, and the deep relationships her parents built with their patients helped Tiffany realize that the meaningful, community-rooted life she truly valued was in Grass Valley, where she now continues the family practice and honors her mother's legacy.
Tiffany originally performed this story at Medicine Story: on the meanings of healing, a live storytelling event produced by Dr. Rebecca George from the Sierra Valley Health Center in Nevada City, CA in 2025. This event was generously funded by the California Health Care Foundation, as a part of our Satellites Program.
The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.
This episode of Stories from the World of Medicine is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation. and our friends at the podcast Unleashed: Redesigning Health Care.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Listeners, if you enjoy the nocturness, then you'll also enjoy Unleashed, Redesigning Healthcare, |
| 0:06.0 | a new podcast about clinician-led innovation on the front lines of care. |
| 0:10.5 | The featured guests are the clinician innovators themselves, their stories, their voices, |
| 0:15.0 | their ingenuity, their commitment to their patients, and their humanity, and even the deeply |
| 0:19.9 | felt gains in their own well-being. |
| 0:22.5 | Unleashed is from our friends at the Dartmouth Institute, one of our sponsors for this episode. |
| 0:27.9 | Learn more in today's show notes or search for Unleashed, redesigning health care anywhere you listen |
| 0:33.8 | to podcasts. |
| 0:36.0 | Support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical Association. |
| 0:40.3 | At the nocturness, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy |
| 0:44.7 | laws. Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. All views expressed are those |
| 0:50.3 | of the person speaking and not their employer. |
| 0:59.5 | I'm Emily Silverman, and this is The Nocturnists. |
| 1:06.2 | Today's guest is optometrist Tiffany Chan, who performed on stage at a live storytelling event produced by Dr. Rebecca George at the Sierra Valley Health Center in Nevada City, California in 2025, |
| 1:12.4 | an event that was made possible with support from the California Healthcare Foundation. |
| 1:17.6 | Tiffany grew up in the gold rush town of Grass Valley, |
| 1:21.6 | built a career in elite academic medicine at Johns Hopkins, |
| 1:24.9 | and ultimately found her way back home after her mother's sudden |
| 1:28.8 | illness transformed her sense of place and purpose. In my conversation with Tiffany, we talk about |
| 1:36.0 | the tension between working at an elite academic medical center and the pull of home, |
| 1:42.1 | how her mother's medical crises reshaped her understanding of healing, |
| 1:46.3 | the intimacy and continuity of small-town relationship-driven medicine, |
... |
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