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 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.

One professor of English Literature, Theresa Brown, decided to become an

oncology nurse, she suddenly found herself juggling seemingly impossible patient

expectations. And when she later was diagnosed with breast cancer herself,

she was forced to confront the paradoxes of a system that demands

so much of its health care practitioners,

yet provides insufficient support for them. She recounts these

revelations in her recent book, Healing, when a nurse becomes a patient. A frequent contributor to the

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