Support for the Nocturness comes from the California Medical Association.

The season of the Nocturnus is sponsored by the Physicians Foundation.

At the Nocturnus, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws.

Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality.

All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.

Thank you. expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer. You're listening to The Nocturness, stories from the world of medicine.

I'm Emily Silverman.

As clinicians, it can be tough to snap out of medical mode when our loved ones get sick.

Our brains get wired a certain way,

wired toward diagnosis and treatment and problem solving and action.

But sometimes that's not what our loved ones need.

Sometimes a pause, a breath, and a listening ear is just what the doctor

ordered. In today's episode, Dr. Anthony Williams talks about the lessons he learned and

unlearned about how to handle life's hardest challenges and how this all came to a head

when his partner developed a mysterious chronic disease.

In the conversation that follows, Anthony and I talk about uncertainty in medicine,

masculinity as it pertains to caregiving, and how a simple change in language can dramatically

shift one's mindset.

Anthony is a med-pedesist at Health Partners, who splits his clinical time between

regions and children's Minnesota.

He's an associate program director of the MedPeed's residency program at the University of

Minnesota and an associate director for the Center for the Art of Medicine.

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