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 healthcare 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 heartbreaking, 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.

If you were asked to build a medical school from scratch, how would you do it?

It's not a chance that most of us get, but that was exactly the task given to our guest

on this episode, Dr. Sharmila Machija. Dr. Machija is a gynecologic oncologist by training,

a clinician who has spent her career walking with patients through some of life's most

vulnerable and uncertain moments. She has also served as chair of obstetrics and gynaecology at

Montefiore Health System in New York, and before that, at Emory University. Most recently

and most notably, she is the founding dean of the new Alice Walton School of Medicine

in Bentonville, Arkansas. Here, she has taken on the ambitious and deeply human task of creating

a medical school that doesn't just teach medicine, but reimagines its purpose. Over the course

...