The Doctor's Art

One of medicine's thorniest ethical questions concerns the lengths to which a physician should go to ameliorate suffering, including the use of medical means to hasten death. Yet, particularly for those who care for patients with, or for those who live with, serious illness, this question is all but inevitable. In this episode, Stefanie Green, MD , the current president of the Canadian Associ...

What does it take to lead a health department with a budget of more than $50 billion, overseeing the health of nearly 20 million Americans? Here to tell us about that is  Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH , who was the 15th New York State Commissioner of Health from 2011 to 2014. Today, Dr. Shah is a nationally recognized advocate of patient safety, health care innovation, and high-quality, low-cost care. He...

Storytelling, pain, rage, and cultural competency are just some of the themes we will explore in this episode. Our guest, Haider Warraich, MD , grew up and went to medical school in Pakistan before completing residency at Harvard Medical School and fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at Duke University Medical Center. Today, he is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the associat...

What if we could scientifically prove that compassion improves our well-being, our cognitive function, our longevity, and societal welfare? Here to explore these questions is our guest on this episode, James Doty, MD , a neurosurgeon, inventor, entrepreneur and writer. As the founding director of Stanford's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education , his academic focus is the...

Too often, modern medicine focuses on life-extending interventions for those nearing the end of life at the expense of quality of life. Our guest today, Shoshana Ungerleider, MD , argues we urgently need to rethink the emphasis of end-of-life care. She's the founder of the End Well Foundation , a nonprofit that seeks to improve how doctors and patients approach issues of mortality, as well as...

"Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most."    So writes Frank Ostaseski , an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care. Frank is the founder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, th...

The ICU can be a traumatizing place for patients, who are frequently heavily sedated, rendered unable to speak by breathing tubes, isolated by family visit limitations, and sometimes even physically restrained. In fact, a significant proportion of patients discharged from the ICU later develop persistent cognitive impairments and physical disabilities. Over the past two decades, Wes Ely, MD  has w...

A pivotal development in the history of cancer research was the discovery that cancers can arise from mutations in genes already present in normal, healthy cells. Joining us in this episode is Harold Varmus, MD , who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989 with his colleague, J. Michael Bishop, for this discovery. Their work has enabled scientists to explore why certain cancers de...

For all the crucial work physicians do in the hospital, no one spends more time with hospitalized patients than nurses. This is especially true in the intensive care unit, where nurses serve as patients’ conduits with their medical team and perhaps even with the outside world. Joining us in this episode is Christin Thankachan , an ICU nurse at Stanford Health Care who cares for the most seriously...

Few would dispute that vision is just about our most important sense. From a neurophysiological perspective, more than half of the human brain is dedicated to processing vision. But beyond that, it also enables us to meaningfully interact with the world and the people around us, and allows us to engage in many of the activities that bring us joy in life. Joining us in this episode is Michael Marmo...

When it comes to medical humanitarianism, there is no bigger name than Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known in English as Doctors Without Borders. MSF is renowned for its work in regions affected by armed conflict, endemic diseases, and natural disasters. In this episode, we are joined by Cristos Christou, MD, a Greek surgeon who has served as the international president of MSF since 2019. A...

While digital technologies now permeate nearly every aspect of our lives, their application to improve medicine remains limited. Still, recent advances in artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and other technologies hold enormous potential to transform how healthcare is delivered. At the forefront of exploring this potential is Justin Norden, MD, MBA , a physician and investor at the ventur...

As one of the most prolific and acclaimed physician writers today, Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD is the author of seven books on the intricacies of modern medical practice and the doctor-patient relationship. Her other writings have appeared in The New York Times , The Atlantic , The New Yorker , in addition to various leading medical journals. She is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Bellev...

In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified the five stages of dying in her book On Death and Dying . Her work has radically transformed the way we think and talk about grief and loss, giving us a shared vocabulary and understanding of a previously murky, yet universal, human experience. Towards the end of her life, Kübler-Ross worked closely with David Kessler , with whom she co-authored several bo...

Advances in modern medicine mean a greater proportion of people today than ever before will live well into old age. Despite the seemingly encouraging trend, geriatrician Louise Aronson, MD, MFA  argues that we have made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Dr. Aronson has made it her life's work to help us reimagine the rich possibilities of hu...

On June 28, 2022, we released an episode featuring Ellen Dunphy , a 35-year old patient with a terminal diagnosis of gastric cancer who had been under the care of co-host Dr. Tyler Johnson. Ellen passed away a week later. Accompanying every step on her cancer journey was her husband, Andy Clinnin. In this episode, Andy joins us to share his experiences as Ellen’s caregiver and primary source of em...

What should we do about the fact that a person's health is affected in large part by social factors beyond the confines of the hospital? For a long time, traditional health care institutions have been inadequate in answering this question. Joining us in this episode is Toyin Ajayi, MD, MPhil , co-founder and chief executive officer of Cityblock Health , a tech-driven health care provider for...

The Human Genome Project was a 13 year long international effort to map and sequence all of the genes in the human genome. Leading this ambitious endeavor was Francis Collins, MD, PhD, who was also Director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021. His work has had a far-reaching impact on our understanding of diseases and the development of new therapies. In addition to being one of...

With around 63 million beneficiaries, Medicare is the single largest provider of health insurance in the United States, serving Americans aged 65 or older, as well as some younger patients who have certain disabilities. Directing this massive program is  Meena Seshamani, MD, PhD , an otolaryngologist and former Vice President of Clinical Care Transformation at MedStar Health, a large health care o...

Pediatric neurosurgeons manage some of the most complex diseases in children, operating on the delicate and precious organ that makes us essentially human. Jay Wellons, MD  is Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the author of All That Moves Us , a memoir that offers an intimate and gripping account of the triumphs, terrors, joys, and pathos h...

On New Year's Eve of 2020, at the age of 29, Katie Coleman was diagnosed with metastatic renal oncocytoma, a type of kidney cancer so rare that she is the only known case in the United States and one of only a handful around the world. The sheer uniqueness of her situation resulted in a prolonged course of prognostic and therapeutic uncertainty. Thanks to the work of oncologists at the Nation...

Technological advancements have enabled us to accomplish medical miracles through novel medical devices, algorithms, and digital tools. At the same time, the exponential entanglement of tech with healthcare has led many clinicians to feel disconnected from the human element of medicine. Here to discuss this conundrum is Bryant Lin, MD, MEng , the director of Medicine and the Muse , the medical hum...

Rana Awdish, MD  was on the last day of her critical care medicine training when her life changed forever. Seven months pregnant at the time, Dr. Awdish abruptly found herself in a life threatening crisis when a previously undiagnosed liver tumor suddenly ruptured. She was rushed to the ICU of her own hospital, where she came unimaginably close to death multiple times. Despite this tragic event, s...

Imagine showing up for work every day for a year, knowing full well that each day you risk contracting a potentially devastating disease with unknown long-term consequences. That's exactly what Thomas Fisher, MD  went through, as he documents vividly in his recent book, The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago E.R. , which delves into what it was like fighting COVID-19 on...

What is it like to comfort patients in the moments before they surrender consciousness to undergo surgery? What can the humanities teach us about being present for a patient when they are at their most vulnerable? As an anesthesiologist and founding director of Medicine and the Muse , Stanford Medicine’s health humanities program, Audrey Shafer, MD  has spent her career pondering and addressing th...