Hi, I'm Henry Bear.

And I'm Tyler Johnson.

And you're listening to The Doctor's Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.

Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered.

What makes medicine meaningful?

Can a stronger understanding of this meaning

create better doctors?

How can we build health care institutions

that nurture the doctor-patient connection?

What can we learn about the human condition from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?

In seeking answers to these questions, we meet with deep thinkers working across health care, from doctors and nurses to patients and health care executives, those who have collected a career's worth of hard-earned wisdom.

Probing the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns heart-breaking, amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.

We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.

Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions.

All right, this is Dr. Tyler Johnson, and I'm here with Henry and our special guest today is Rebecca Merrill.

Rebecca earned a bachelor's degree with a double major in psychology and religion from Wellesley College in 1985.

She also received a master's degree in education from Harvard in 1989 and a second master's degree in clinical social work from Smith in 1993,

followed by four years of clinical training at Duke University.

She is going to be unique among our guests, probably ever, because of the unusual role that she plays in the health care system.

In a sense, she's kind of like a ethical or spiritual or metaphysical doctor to a lot of the leading doctors that you might hear about.

So she helps physicians, particularly physicians who may be feeling burnt out or directionless to help

them figure out how to connect back to the meaning that brought them into medicine in the first place.

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