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. Imagine showing up for work every day for a year, knowing full well that with each day you risk contracting a potentially devastating disease with unknown long-term consequences.

That's exactly what Dr. Thomas Fisher went through, as he documents vividly in his

recent book, The Emergency, A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER, which delves into what it was like fighting

COVID-19 on the front lines in 2020.

Dr Fisher is an emergency physician at the University of Chicago Medical Center,

and was previously a health care executive, White House fellow, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical

scholar. He has dedicated his life to caring for his community, the black population of Chicago's south side.

In this episode, he shares harrowing stories from the emergency room, gives an impassioned critique of a health care system that allows

for too little space for doctors to provide the care their patients need, and discusses

...