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person speaking and not their employer.

This is The Nocturnous Conversations.

I'm Emily Silverman.

What happens when doing the right thing in medicine becomes impossible?

When it's not the science, but the system itself that stands between a doctor and her patient's well-being.

My guest today is Dr. Wendy Dean,

a psychiatrist, writer, and co-founder of the nonprofit, moral injury of health care. The beginnings

of her groundbreaking work came not in the clinic or in the boardroom, but in her own garden,

hands in the soil, when she first connected the struggles that she and her colleagues were facing to the concept of moral injury.

In her powerful book, If I Betray These Words, Wendy explores the dissonance that clinicians feel

in a health care system increasingly driven by profit over people.

We talk about the origins of the term moral injury, how it differs from burnout, and why the very

oaths that draw physicians into medicine can, when betrayed, become a source of anguish.

In this episode, we'll hear about a doctor who was fired over dinner for refusing to put

patient safety at risk, a beloved pediatrician who was sent away for a psychiatric evaluation

and never returned, how corporate consolidation is quietly gutting primary care from the

inside out,

and the brave clinicians fighting back,

with lawsuits, new care models, and bold acts of defiance.

...