Medical Center Hour: Two Ends of the Stethoscope: Writing as a Patient-Physician

Speaker: Celeste Lipkes, MD, MFA, Writer and Staff Inpatient Consult Psychiatrist, Charles George VA Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina

Title of Lecture: “Two Ends of the Stethoscope: Writing as a Patient-Physician”

Despite the inevitability that our health as medical providers will one day fail, we continue to speak of “patients” and “physicians” as discrete categories. This dichotomy has recently been challenged by narratives of providers experiencing mid-career medical crises – but what about stories of doctors who were patients first? In this talk, Celeste Lipkes will read from her new poetry collection Radium Girl, which explores the challenges of navigating medical training as a person with chronic illness. We will think together about the strengths trainees with health challenges bring to the field as well as ways institutions can recruit and support them.

Lunch will be provided for the first 40 in-person attendees.

Medical Center Hour is free of charge and open to the public. It is a program of the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics, University of Virginia School of Medicine.

For more information, go to the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics.

Watch Medical Center Hour recordings at https://www.youtube.com/user/UVAMCH

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