Hi, I'm Henry Bear.

And I'm Tyler Johnson.

And you're listening to The Doctors 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. Our guest today is acclaimed essayist Emily Maloney.

At the age of 19, Emily was hospitalized for a suicide attempt.

Upon discharge, she was presented with a five-figure hospital bill that

she would spend the better part of the following decade trying to pay off.

She would eventually find herself working at a technician in the emergency department as an ambulance technician and in various other roles in health care.

Along her passage from patient to health care provider, Emily discovered shocking realities of the financial and personal

costs of being ill in America. She learned the surprising ways our health care systems fail

its patients and experienced moments of genuine connection with those she cared for.

She chronicles all of this in her recently published collection of essays, Cost of Living.

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