Overview
The practice of medicine–filled with moments of joy, suffering, grace, sorrow, and hope–offers a window into the human condition. Though serving as guides and companions to patients’ illness experiences is profoundly meaningful work, the busy nature of modern medicine can blind its own practitioners to the reasons they entered it in the first place. Join resident physician Henry Bair and oncologist Tyler Johnson as they meet with doctors, patients, leaders, educators, and others in healthcare, to explore stories on finding and nourishing meaning in medicine. This podcast is for anyone striving for a deeper connection with their medical journey. Visit TheDoctorsArt.com for more information.
265 Episodes
George Mark Children's House is a pediatric palliative care center in California that provides respite and hospice for children with serious illnesses and their families. In March 2025, we heard the personal story of the House’s director. In this episode, we have been invited on site to speak with someone whose life has been touched by the House. Our guests are Kaitlyn, a young woman living with epilepsy, her mother Liz, and Kyle, a child life specialist. Kaitlyn has lived with seizur...
Transcribed - Published: 3 June 2025
If you were asked to build a medical school from scratch, how would you do it? It's not a chance most of us get — but that was exactly the task given to our guest on this episode, Sharmila Makhija, MD, MBA. Dr. Makhija is a gynecologic oncologist by training, a clinician who has spent her career working with patients through some of life's most vulnerable and uncertain moments. She has also served as chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Montefiore Health System in New York, and before that, ...
Transcribed - Published: 14 May 2025
What happens to the practice of medicine when machines begin to reason, summarize and even empathize — at least in the linguistic sense — better than humans do? In this episode, we meet with Michael Howell, MD, MPH, Chief Clinical Officer at Google, to explore the seismic shifts underway in healthcare as artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in clinical workflows. Dr. Howell, a pulmonary and critical care physician, has spent his career at the crossroads of clinical exc...
Transcribed - Published: 6 May 2025
If you could be plugged into a machine that simulated the perfect experience — limitless joy, deep connection, a sense of purpose — yet you knew it wasn't real, would you choose to stay plugged in? This isn't just a philosophical exercise. As our lives become increasingly digitized, our relationships filtered through screens, our emotions managed by algorithms, our attention parceled out to feeds and notifications, we are confronted with a deeper question: what does it mean to have an...
Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2025
There is something uniquely haunting about many neurological diseases. These conditions often don't only affect the body — they reshape the very foundation of who we are, our memories, our personalities, our language. When the brain begins to fail, the boundary between illness and identity start to blur; the person we know begins to fade even before their life has ended. In this episode, we are joined by John Rhee, MD, MPH, a neuro-oncologist and palliative care physician at Dana-Farb...
Transcribed - Published: 26 March 2025
Neurosurgery is known as one of the most precise and demanding specialties in medicine. It requires absolute technical mastery in a surgical field where a millimeter’s difference can be the deciding factor between lifelong disability or a life restored. But what happens when a surgeon trained to be objective and detached experiences deep personal loss? How does it reshape the way they practice medicine? In this episode, we are joined by Joseph “Jody” Stern, MD, a neurosurgeon and the ...
Transcribed - Published: 18 March 2025
In medicine, we are trained to fight for life — to extend it, preserve it and restore it. But sometimes the goal shifts from curing to comforting. That, in brief, is the essence of palliative care. It compels us to ask what it means to truly care for a person at the end of life, not as a failure of medicine but as a profound act of love. In this episode, we enter a space where time slows down, where every moment is cherished, and where medicine is tantamount to presence, dignity, and ...
Transcribed - Published: 4 March 2025
Medicine is often framed as a meritocracy, where intelligence, hard work, and dedication dictate success. Yet, institutions of medicine are shaped by histories of exclusion, bias, and systemic inequities. And for clinicians coming from marginalized backgrounds, the journey is not just about learning the science. It's also about learning an entirely different set of rules — rules that are unspoken and unwritten, but deeply felt. For Damon Tweedy, MD, this struggle was deeply personal. ...
Transcribed - Published: 20 February 2025
Medicine is often framed as a meritocracy, where intelligence, hard work, and dedication dictate success. Yet, institutions of medicine are shaped by histories of exclusion, bias, and systemic inequities. And for clinicians coming from marginalized backgrounds, the journey is not just about learning the science. It's also about learning an entirely different set of rules — rules that are unspoken and unwritten, but deeply felt. For Damon Tweedy, MD, this struggle was deeply personal. ...
Transcribed - Published: 20 February 2025
Physicians are trained to diagnose and treat disease, but they're not always taught how to lead. Yet in an era of increasing administrative burdens, evolving healthcare policies, and growing physician burnout, leadership skills have never been more essential. How can physicians reclaim their voices in healthcare decision making? What makes an effective physician leader in today's complex landscape? Here to answer these questions is Peter Angood, MD, President and CEO of the American A...
Transcribed - Published: 12 February 2025
The American diet is the leading cause of death among Americans. Accumulating medical evidence now shows that poor diet not only contributes to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, but also to cancer, Alzheimer's disease, liver disease, and much more. Despite its direct and indirect roles in causing half or more of all deaths, food is not something doctors learn about in their training, nor is it something that's emphasized enough to patients by the medical establishment. Our guest on th...
Transcribed - Published: 31 January 2025
In recent years, it has become evident that loneliness is one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time — so much so that the US Surgeon General has labeled it an epidemic with far reaching consequences. The pain of isolation doesn't merely gnaw at our sense of belonging: it undermines our physical wellbeing, erodes our mental health, and places an invisible strain on communities. In this climate of ever widening personal and cultural divides, the collective call for deeper hu...
Transcribed - Published: 22 January 2025
We have featured many techno-optimists on this show — healthcare leaders who believe that precision medicine and emerging technologies promise to revolutionize and democratize medicine in the best of ways. But look under the glossy veneer of this optimism and we see a far more complex story, one that touches on questions of power, inequity and the troubling ways in which genetics can be wielded, intentionally or not, to shape society in potentially dangerous ways. Our guest on this episo...
Transcribed - Published: 31 December 2024
Life can be hard when we are sick. But even when we aren't, life can still wear us down in quiet, surprising ways. Indeed, major traumas are relatively rare, and it's the moments when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to prolonged periods of stress, that we fall into a spiral of exhaustion, fatigue, burnout, and hopelessness. Vincent Deary, PhD is an author and health psychologist who explores the mundane struggles of everyday life. His writings blend clinical insight, ...
Transcribed - Published: 5 December 2024
Variations of cryonics — the long term storage of human beings, usually at low temperatures — have long been featured in science fiction. In stories involving space travel, it’s often used as a solution for long-duration journeys. But increasingly, this is not just the stuff of fiction anymore. The prospect of preserving ourselves, potentially indefinitely, forces us to ask some of the most profound questions we have ever faced: are we meant to transcend the boundaries of our mortal live...
Transcribed - Published: 26 November 2024
One of the most mysterious and frightening entities in medicine are prion diseases — rare neurodegenerative disorders that are usually infectious in nature but involve not bacteria or viruses, but proteins. Prions are misfolded proteins that can induce normal proteins to become misfolded as well, resulting in a chain reaction that leads to irreversible brain damage and death. What makes prions alarming is that they are incurable, can incubate for decades in a person's brain without symptoms, ...
Transcribed - Published: 14 November 2024
The second half of the 20th century saw monumental shifts in civil rights in the United States, with the end of legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement affecting all spheres of life, from education to health care to housing to marriage and more. Judge David S. Tatel is a civil rights lawyer who has contributed to key advancements in voting rights, educational equality, and disability rights. Over the course of his five-decade career, he has served as Director...
Transcribed - Published: 5 November 2024
Addiction is often misunderstood not just by the public, but also by clinicians. It challenges us as individuals, families, and communities. To understand addiction is to understand not only human behavior and neuroscience, but also social networks, public policies, and bioethics. Our guest on this episode, Keith Humphreys, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in addiction and has served on the White House Commission on Drug Free Communities during the Bush administration, and as Senior Pol...
Transcribed - Published: 31 October 2024
One of the most fascinating concepts in human health is the idea of social contagion, meaning that emotions, behaviors, and health outcomes can spread through social networks, much like infectious diseases. Examples in the medical literature abound: if a person becomes obese, their friends have a significantly higher chance of becoming obese — even their friends of friends have increased odds of becoming obese. Similarly, someone who quit smoking is likely to create a ripple effect through th...
Transcribed - Published: 24 October 2024
Digital technologies have saturated our lives and there is no going back. Given this, it's worth pondering whether and how they are fundamentally reshaping our mind and our relationships. A seminal work that explores these issues is the 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by journalist Nicholas Carr. In it, he argues that the internet is “shallowing” our brains, meaning that as we offload cognitive tasks to digital tools, our ability to read linearly, to abs...
Transcribed - Published: 17 October 2024
Medicine is filled with stories that illustrate the most beautiful, devastating, hopeful, and consequential moments of life. But how do we capture these moments and transform them into everlasting lessons that guide us on our search for meaning? That's where the art of storytelling comes in. Our guest on this episode is Anna Reisman, MD, director of the Program for Humanities in Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Reisman is not only a physician-writer whose essays have appeared...
Transcribed - Published: 8 October 2024
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the phrase “Healthcare Heroes” echoed through hospital walls and city streets. For many people, this felt like an overdue acknowledgment of the difficult and important work that healthcare professionals carried out during the most devastating healthcare crisis the world had seen in a century. But this phrase can also be problematic, romanticizing the sacrifices of individual clinicians without addressing the systemic failures that put them at ri...
Transcribed - Published: 1 October 2024
Precision medicine — the approach to health care that involves tailoring medical interventions to an individual's genetic makeup, environment and lifestyle — promises to deliver the right treatment to the right person at the right time. From preventing diseases decades before they appear, to specially designed cocktails of cancer drugs, to genetic modification of rare diseases, many of these applications sound straight out of science fiction. At the forefront of precision medicine and me...
Transcribed - Published: 24 September 2024
Joseph Sakran, MD, MPH was a teenager in a small town in Virginia when, in 1994, his life took a dramatic turn. At the age of 17, he was out with his friends after a high school football game when a nearby gunfight broke out and he was struck by a stray bullet in the throat. The bullet, tearing through his windpipe and a carotid artery, brought him to the razor edge of death before he was saved by trauma surgeons. Thirty years later, Dr. Sakran is now a trauma surgeon who serves as Direc...
Transcribed - Published: 18 September 2024
To the best of our knowledge, humans appear to be unique among animals in our awareness of mortality — at least in our capacity for existential reflection about death in an abstract, cultural, and symbolic sense. With this capacity comes profound psychological experiences, from our search for meaning, to our struggle with grief, to a yearning for the spiritual. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care physician based in the United Kingdom who entered medicine aft...
Transcribed - Published: 10 September 2024
Modern medicine has long considered many neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease to be immutably linked to the fate of certain unlucky individuals through yet-poorly understood genetic mechanisms. But increasingly, we are seeing evidence that some of our lifestyle choices, including our diet, physical activity, and relationships, may play a significant role in the development of, or protection against, these diseases. Our guest on this episode, David Per...
Transcribed - Published: 3 September 2024
What makes a life worth living? This question has animated great thinkers and faith traditions for millennia. Interestingly enough, in our time of rapid globalization, technological advancement, and material abundance, we often seem more unmoored from our conception of the self and its relation to the world than ever before.Our guest on this episode, Miroslav Volf, has spent his life wrestling with this question of questions and helping others to do the same. Volf is a professor of theology a...
Transcribed - Published: 27 August 2024
Most people shudder at the idea of an infectious disease outbreak — patients stricken with a mysterious illness, hospitals overflowing, and cities going into lockdown. But for Syra Madad, DHSc, MSc , MCP, rushing into such a scenario, donned in a hazmat suit, to control the chaos has been a dream since childhood. Today, she is an epidemiologist, biosecurity advisor, and a pathogen preparedness expert who serves as Senior Director of the System-Wide Special Pathogens Program at New York City H...
Transcribed - Published: 22 August 2024
For many physicians, having serious illness conversations with patients — talking about a dire prognosis or the futility of curative treatments — is one of the most daunting aspects of patient care. But to palliative care physician Shunichi Nakagawa, MD, these conversations are fundamentally about communicating the honest truth in an elegant, considerate, and humane way. Dr. Nakagawa, the director of the Inpatient Palliative Care Service at Columbia University Medical Center, joins us in...
Transcribed - Published: 13 August 2024
When Impossible Foods released its first product, the Impossible Burger, in 2016, it was met with equal parts curiosity, skepticism, and excitement. This plant-based “meat that bleeds” was seen as a novelty item. Today, Impossible Foods’ expanded line of offerings, from sausages to chicken nuggets to Italian meatballs, can be found in most American grocery stores at a price that rivals traditional meats. The founder of Impossible Foods is Pat Brown, MD, PhD, a physician and molecular bio...
Transcribed - Published: 6 August 2024
Many people regard dementia as a fate worse than death, in large part because it strikes at the essence of our humanity — our memories, identity, and relationships with others. Unlike diseases that primarily afflict the body, dementia erodes the mind, leading to a gradual fragmentation and loss of self and autonomy. The burden of this disease on caregivers also cannot be understated. Not only does dementia require comprehensive, long term care that addresses the afflicted individual’s co...
Transcribed - Published: 30 July 2024
There once was a time when indoor smoking was allowed in workplaces all across the United States, when trans fats were ubiquitous, and when fast food restaurants didn't have to post calorie information on their menus. That wasn't so long ago, and it's in large part thanks to the pioneering efforts of Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, Health Commissioner of New York City from 2002 to 2009, that these changes were made. Dr. Frieden’s city-wide initiatives during this time included steps to reduce tobacco u...
Transcribed - Published: 23 July 2024
It is well documented that descendants of Holocaust survivors exhibit greater levels of anxiety, depression, and vulnerability. The trauma of domestic violence can ripple through generations, with maladaptive coping mechanisms and emotional instability perpetuating subsequent cycles of trauma and dysfunction. The brutal history of slavery in the United States is seen today in the form of persistent economic disparities and ongoing social injustices, affecting mental and physical health across...
Transcribed - Published: 16 July 2024
The Rwandan Genocide, occurring between April-July 1994, was a devastating episode of mass violence in which nearly 1 million people were killed over a period of 100 days. Fueled by longstanding ethnic tensions, political power struggles, and a deep seated history of discrimination, the genocide saw members of the Tutsi ethnic group slaughtered indiscriminately by extremists of the Hutu ethnic group. Growing up amid this chaos, Christian Ntizimira, MD witnessed some of humanity's most ho...
Transcribed - Published: 9 July 2024
Death and grief are much more “hidden” from society today than they once were. The medicalization of dying means that death now occurs more frequently in hospitals and care facilities than at homes. The secularization of society means that traditional religious or communal rituals surrounding death and mourning have diminished. The fast pace and optimistic lens of consumer culture means less contemplation of aging, mortality, and grief. But Mikołaj Sławkowski-Rode, PhD, a professor of ph...
Transcribed - Published: 2 July 2024
For a profession like medicine in which suffering — be it physical, psychological, existential, or spiritual — is so commonly encountered and experienced, we have developed remarkably little shared vocabulary about what suffering means. That is, if we even have the conversations at all.In early June 2024, during the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual conference in Chicago, we hosted a live podcast event at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, gathering Sunita Puri,...
Transcribed - Published: 25 June 2024
Most of us take free will for granted — from the biggest of life decisions to choosing an ice cream flavor, we are generally capable of freely deciding how to think and how to behave without outside influence. But Robert Sapolsky believes our decisions cannot be disentangled from our genetics, environment, and neurobiology. In other words, to him, free will does not exist. Dr. Sapolsky, a neuroscientist and primatologist at Stanford University, is a leading thinker on the biology of stre...
Transcribed - Published: 18 June 2024
Conventionally, we are taught that evolution implies there is no ultimate purpose to our existence, that life lacks inherent meaning — we are the product of countless intricate molecular and genetic accidents. And to many, evolution leaves little room for, and perhaps even contradicts, the existence of a deity. However, our guest on this episode, Samuel Wilkinson, MD, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, thinks there is another way to look at evolution. Drawing from an array of ...
Transcribed - Published: 11 June 2024
For Mark Lewis, MD, cancer has defined his entire life. Growing up, he witnessed his father's valiant struggle with cancer before it eventually ended his life. While still in medical training, he not only developed pancreatic cancer but also discovered the culprit. Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, an inherited syndrome that drastically increases one's risk of cancers, runs in his family. So now, as a father, he guides his son in making sense of a life burdened with that risk. What’s more,...
Transcribed - Published: 4 June 2024
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with an endowment of over $50 billion, is one of the largest and most influential philanthropic organizations in the world. With a focus on addressing global health, poverty, and education, its initiatives have led to the reduction of malaria mortality by 60% over the past two decades, the near eradication of polio, increased educational opportunities of millions of students, and improved sanitation conditions for millions of people in developing count...
Transcribed - Published: 28 May 2024
In today's world, the idea of “identifying your values” is so ubiquitous, appearing from corporate mission statements to self-help books, that it can seem trivialized to the point of meaninglessness. But in this episode, Ira Bedzow, PhD reminds us it does not have to be this way—explorations of personal values can be an inspiring, holistic, and thought provoking process that transforms everything that we do, from finding joy in work to building fulfilling relationships. Bedzow is the exe...
Transcribed - Published: 21 May 2024
Terminal lucidity is a mysterious yet well-documented phenomenon in which someone at the end of life—including those who have suffered strokes or other brain injuries, or those afflicted by dementia—suddenly returns with mental clarity and is able to recognize loved ones and engage in meaningful and emotionally rich conversations. It challenges our fundamental understanding and assumptions about the nature of consciousness, brain function in the context of severe illness, and personhood. In this episode, Alexander Batthyány, PhD, a cognitive scientist and the Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute, offers insights on terminal lucidity from his years of study on this phenomenon from a philosophical, ethical, neurological, and psychological perspective. He is the author of the 2023 book Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death. Over the course of our conversation, he shares how witnessing terminal lucidity in his grandmother has shaped his life purpose, why he chooses to use the word “soul” in his academic research, the role of spirituality and religion in making sense of terminal lucidity, the limits of our scientific and materialistic understanding of the brain, what terminal lucidity reveals about the dignity and unpredictability inherent in the human condition, and what it ultimately teaches us about kindness and compassion. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:31 - The personal experience that drew Dr. Batthyány to study terminal lucidity 6:34 - An exploration of human dignity 12:26 - The importance of talking and thinking about the human “soul” 18:26 - Definition and phenomenology of terminal lucidity 23:57 - What is known about brain functioning during episodes of terminal lucidity 31:44 - Advice for caregivers, family members, and clinicians if a patient experiences terminal lucidity 36:55 - The prevalence of terminal lucidity 40:14 - Whether individuals who experience terminal lucidity have insight into their condition 42:15 - Why phenomena like terminal lucidity matter Dr. Alexander Batthyány is the author of Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death (2023). Dr. Batthyány can be found in Twitter/X at @Alxdr_Batthyany. Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 14 May 2024
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) plays a crucial role in health care. As the organization that oversees medical education and thus the pipeline of future medical professionals in the United States, its critical duties include administering the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), managing the residency application service, drafting guidelines for faculty members and departments at medical schools and academic hospitals, disseminating data on medical education and workforce trends that shape policymaking at medical schools and government bodies, and promoting diversity in health care. Leading this organization is David Skorton, MD, a cardiologist and pioneer of cardiac imaging and computer processing techniques, who also previously served as the 13th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and as President of Cornell University and of the University of Iowa. In this episode, Dr. Skorton shares with us how his family's immigrant past has shaped him, how he went from struggling during his own medical school application process more than 50 years ago to now leading an organization that represents all medical schools and teaching hospitals, why the arts and humanities matter to him, how he thinks about medical education given the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, what great mentors look like, how effective leadership often means learning from everyone around you, and more. In this episode, you will hear about: 2:42 - Dr. Skorton’s unexpected path from jazz musician to President of the AAMC 7:42 - Why current medical admissions aim to be “holistic” 12:09 - The lessons Dr. Skorton learned through mentorship and why the arts and humanities can create better doctors 17:32 - How Dr. Skorton has been able to “see past himself” enough to receive challenging criticism from mentors 28:01 - The core tenets of Dr. Skorton’s leadership philosophy 31:35 - How the AAMC views the future of medical education especially in light of advances in artificial intelligence 38:47 - The importance of diverse healthcare teams 46:32 - Issues that Dr. Skorton addresses through his role at the AAMC Dr. David Skorton can be found on Twitter/X at @DavidJSkorton. Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 7 May 2024
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) plays a crucial role in health care. As the organization that oversees medical education and thus the pipeline of future medical professionals in the United States, its critical duties include administering the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), managing the residency application service, drafting guidelines for faculty members and departments at medical schools and academic hospitals, disseminating data on medical education and workforce trends that shape policymaking at medical schools and government bodies, and promoting diversity in health care. Leading this organization is David Skorton, MD, a cardiologist and pioneer of cardiac imaging and computer processing techniques, who also previously served as the 13th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and as President of Cornell University and of the University of Iowa. In this episode, Dr. Skorton shares with us how his family's immigrant past has shaped him, how he went from struggling during his own medical school application process more than 50 years ago to now leading an organization that represents all medical schools and teaching hospitals, why the arts and humanities matter to him, how he thinks about medical education given the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, what great mentors look like, how effective leadership often means learning from everyone around you, and more. In this episode, you will hear about: 2:42 - Dr. Skorton’s unexpected path from jazz musician to President of the AAMC 7:42 - Why current medical admissions aim to be “holistic” 12:09 - The lessons Dr. Skorton learned through mentorship and why the arts and humanities can create better doctors 17:32 - How Dr. Skorton has been able to “see past himself” enough to receive challenging criticism from mentors 28:01 - The core tenets of Dr. Skorton’s leadership philosophy 31:35 - How the AAMC views the future of medical education especially in light of advances in artificial intelligence 38:47 - The importance of diverse healthcare teams 46:32 - Issues that Dr. Skorton addresses through his role at the AAMC Dr. David Skorton can be found on Twitter/X at @DavidJSkorton. Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 7 May 2024
In spring of 2020, Cornelia Griggs, MD was finishing her nearly decade-long training to become a pediatric surgeon in New York City, when COVID-19 struck and life fell apart. The hospital was flooded with mysteriously sick patients for whom no known treatments existed, basic supplies disappeared from shelves, and each day at work took on an existential burden as she wondered if this would be the day she caught the deadly disease herself. Dr. Griggs describes these dramatic stories from the early days of the pandemic in her 2024 memoir, The Sky Was Falling. Today, she is a triple board-certified pediatric surgeon, having completed medical school and pediatric surgery fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center, and her adult general surgery residency and surgical critical care fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she currently practices. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Griggs describes the course of her challenging training in medicine, why it takes “a little crazy” to succeed as a surgeon, harrowing moments that defined heroism amid the throes of the pandemic, how she continued working even when giving up was the easy option, and more. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:26 - What initially drew Dr. Griggs into the field of medicine and to the speciality of pediatric surgery 14:35 - Why the operating room is a “safe space” for Dr. Griggs 19:36 - The sense of alarm that Dr. Griggs experienced in the early days of the pandemic that drove her to write her viral New York Times op-ed, The Sky is Falling 28:26 - How Dr. Griggs fell into an “investigative reporter” headspace as the pandemic raged around her in New York City 30:26 - The sense of fear that enveloped both patients and the medical community during the first months of the pandemic 40:27 - A moment during the early pandemic when Dr. Griggs seriously considered leaving the city and her post in the hospital 46:30 - How ICU nurses brought dignity and humanity when tending to seriously ill COVID-19 patients 51:16 - The hopefulness Dr. Griggs carries in seeing the large number of people who have entered medicine since the pandemic Dr. Cornelia Griggs can be found on Twitter/X at @CorneliaLG. Dr. Griggs is the author of The Sky Was Falling (2024). Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 30 April 2024
In spring of 2020, Cornelia Griggs, MD was finishing her nearly decade-long training to become a pediatric surgeon in New York City, when COVID-19 struck and life fell apart. The hospital was flooded with mysteriously sick patients for whom no known treatments existed, basic supplies disappeared from shelves, and each day at work took on an existential burden as she wondered if this would be the day she caught the deadly disease herself. Dr. Griggs describes these dramatic stories from the early days of the pandemic in her 2024 memoir, The Sky Was Falling. Today, she is a triple board-certified pediatric surgeon, having completed medical school and pediatric surgery fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center, and her adult general surgery residency and surgical critical care fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she currently practices. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Griggs describes the course of her challenging training in medicine, why it takes “a little crazy” to succeed as a surgeon, harrowing moments that defined heroism amid the throes of the pandemic, how she continued working even when giving up was the easy option, and more. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:26 - What initially drew Dr. Griggs into the field of medicine and to the speciality of pediatric surgery 14:35 - Why the operating room is a “safe space” for Dr. Griggs 19:36 - The sense of alarm that Dr. Griggs experienced in the early days of the pandemic that drove her to write her viral New York Times op-ed, The Sky is Falling 28:26 - How Dr. Griggs fell into an “investigative reporter” headspace as the pandemic raged around her in New York City 30:26 - The sense of fear that enveloped both patients and the medical community during the first months of the pandemic 40:27 - A moment during the early pandemic when Dr. Griggs seriously considered leaving the city and her post in the hospital 46:30 - How ICU nurses brought dignity and humanity when tending to seriously ill COVID-19 patients 51:16 - The hopefulness Dr. Griggs carries in seeing the large number of people who have entered medicine since the pandemic Dr. Cornelia Griggs can be found on Twitter/X at @CorneliaLG. Dr. Griggs is the author ofThe Sky Was Falling (2024). Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 30 April 2024
To many health economists, the growing aging population is the greatest public health challenge facing America. The current fragmented and costly healthcare system is simply incapable of dealing with the complex medical and socioeconomic needs of this population, especially in an equitable way. Our guest on this episode, Linda Fried, MD, MPH, has dedicated her life to rethinking how we can create better health futures for older adults. Her pioneering research has expanded our notions of aging and longevity in the 21st century. Dr. Fried, a geriatrician and epidemiologist, is Dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Senior Vice President of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and former Founding Director of the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins University. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Fried shares how her early experiences as a caseworker drove her to study medicine, surprising lessons from the martial arts aikido, what frailty means in the context of caring for older adults, why America is one of the most age segregated societies in the world, the flaws of over medicalizing health issues, redefining the roles of older adults in society, the importance of meaning and community in sustaining happiness in life, and more. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:30 - What Dr. Fried’s early experiences in social work taught her about justice, social inequity, and taking care of another person 11:47 - How an awareness of the social determinants of health shaped Dr. Fried as a clinician 16:46 - Why physicians need to stop “medicalizing” all aspects of a patient’s life 25:00 - How Dr. Fried came to be interested in geriatrics 28:19 - Dr. Fried’s dedication to extending “healthspan” as well as “lifespan” in our society 31:08 - The clinical definition of “frailty” 34:15 - The value that an older population could bring to our society 38:49 - The United States’ unique culture of age segregation and how it contributes to poor health outcomes for the elderly 45:38 - What the healthcare system and society at large can do to better serve elderly populations 50:55 - Dr. Fried’s advice for keeping true to your purpose as a medical professional Dr. Linda Fried can be found on LinkedIn.Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 23 April 2024
To many health economists, the growing aging population is the greatest public health challenge facing America. The current fragmented and costly healthcare system is simply incapable of dealing with the complex medical and socioeconomic needs of this population, especially in an equitable way. Our guest on this episode, Linda Fried, MD, MPH, has dedicated her life to rethinking how we can create better health futures for older adults. Her pioneering research has expanded our notions of aging and longevity in the 21st century. Dr. Fried, a geriatrician and epidemiologist, is Dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Senior Vice President of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and former Founding Director of the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins University. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Fried shares how her early experiences as a caseworker drove her to study medicine, surprising lessons from the martial arts aikido, what frailty means in the context of caring for older adults, why America is one of the most age segregated societies in the world, the flaws of over medicalizing health issues, redefining the roles of older adults in society, the importance of meaning and community in sustaining happiness in life, and more. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:30 - What Dr. Fried’s early experiences in social work taught her about justice, social inequity, and taking care of another person 11:47 - How an awareness of the social determinants of health shaped Dr. Fried as a clinician 16:46 - Why physicians need to stop “medicalizing” all aspects of a patient’s life 25:00 - How Dr. Fried came to be interested in geriatrics 28:19 - Dr. Fried’s dedication to extending “healthspan” as well as “lifespan” in our society 31:08 - The clinical definition of “frailty” 34:15 - The value that an older population could bring to our society 38:49 - The United States’ unique culture of age segregation and how it contributes to poor health outcomes for the elderly 45:38 - What the healthcare system and society at large can do to better serve elderly populations 50:55 - Dr. Fried’s advice for keeping true to your purpose as a medical professional Dr. Linda Fried can be found on LinkedIn.Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected]. Copyright The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 23 April 2024
The history of cardiac surgery is filled with tales of intrepid surgeons with larger-than-life personalities who pushed the limits of the human body and the bounds of what were then considered acceptable medical practices. The result? Heart transplants, pacemakers, artificial heart valves, heart-lung machines, and other once-unthinkable and experimental procedures that have now saved millions of lives. Our guest in this episode, Gerald Imber, MD, charts these remarkable developments in his 2024 book Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery. While not writing books on the history of medicine, Dr. Imber is a practicing plastic surgeon who specializes in cosmetic surgery. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Imber talks about the challenging yet rewarding training he underwent as a surgery resident, what it means to have an “eye for aesthetics,” why he decided to write a book on the history of heart surgery, stories of daring surgeons from this history, how he reconciles the drive to push the frontiers of medicine with a regard for patient safety, and more. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:15 - What drew Dr. Imber to a career in surgery 7:55 - Dr. Imber’s grueling experiences as a general surgery resident11:52 - Dr. Imber’s transition into plastic surgery and the aesthetic sensibilities necessary for this speciality 22:46 - What Dr. Imber’s current plastic surgery practice looks like 24:28 - How Dr. Imber finds fulfillment and meaning in his work 25:21 - What motivated Dr. Imber to write Cardiac Cowboys, a book about the history of open heart surgery 30:47 - Balancing risks to patient lives with medical and surgical experimentation34:25 - A brief history of open heart surgery40:02 - Key milestones in the development of open heart surgery 45:24 - What Dr. Imber hopes readers take away from Cardiac Cowboys Dr. Gerald Imber is the author of Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery (2024) and Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted (2010).Dr. Imber can be found on Instagram at @geraldimbermd.Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected] The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2024
The history of cardiac surgery is filled with tales of intrepid surgeons with larger-than-life personalities who pushed the limits of the human body and the bounds of what were then considered acceptable medical practices. The result? Heart transplants, pacemakers, artificial heart valves, heart-lung machines, and other once-unthinkable and experimental procedures that have now saved millions of lives. Our guest in this episode, Gerald Imber, MD, charts these remarkable developments in his 2024 book Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery. While not writing books on the history of medicine, Dr. Imber is a practicing plastic surgeon who specializes in cosmetic surgery. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Imber talks about the challenging yet rewarding training he underwent as a surgery resident, what it means to have an “eye for aesthetics,” why he decided to write a book on the history of heart surgery, stories of daring surgeons from this history, how he reconciles the drive to push the frontiers of medicine with a regard for patient safety, and more. In this episode, you’ll hear about: 2:15 - What drew Dr. Imber to a career in surgery 7:55 - Dr. Imber’s grueling experiences as a general surgery resident11:52 - Dr. Imber’s transition into plastic surgery and the aesthetic sensibilities necessary for this speciality 22:46 - What Dr. Imber’s current plastic surgery practice looks like 24:28 - How Dr. Imber finds fulfillment and meaning in his work 25:21 - What motivated Dr. Imber to write Cardiac Cowboys, a book about the history of open heart surgery 30:47 - Balancing risks to patient lives with medical and surgical experimentation34:25 - A brief history of open heart surgery40:02 - Key milestones in the development of open heart surgery 45:24 - What Dr. Imber hopes readers take away from Cardiac Cowboys Dr. Gerald Imber is the author of Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery (2024) and Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted (2010).Dr. Imber can be found on Instagram at @geraldimbermd.Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected] The Doctor’s Art Podcast 2024
Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2024
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