how to become a healer

Episodes of On Becoming a Healer, a podcast hosted by Saul Weiner and Stefan Kertesz. Follow them on Twitter @OnHealer or email OnBecomingaHealer@gmail.com.

Doctors are too often trained, socialized and pressured to become efficient task completers rather than healers, which leads to burnout. Two physicians, Drs. Saul Weiner and Stefan Kertesz, consider how joy in clinical practice requires the capacity to fully and openly engage with patients while maintaining personal boundaries – and doing so in an environment and culture that pushes them in the opposite direction. They explore themes of judgementalism, empathy, ego, and caring, and explore how self-knowledge is essential to effective medical practice, mentoring, medical education, and a fulfilling career. This podcast is builds on Dr. Weiner's book, On Becoming a Healer: The Journey from Patient Care to Caring about Your Patients (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).

About the hosts:

Saul J Weiner, MD is an internist and pediatrician who has taught medical students and residents, and studied physician-patient interactions for over 20 years. In 2001 he published a short essay about how he survived medical school with a learning disability, and discovered that being open about his struggles seemed to be more helpful to people than any research he published. This discovery, along with the profound guidance of a mentor — Simon Auster, led him to writeOn Becoming a Healer: The Journey from Patient Care to Caring about Your Patients. Saul plays the classical guitar (as heard on the Podcast). He can be reached at sauljweiner@gmail.com

Stefan Kertesz, MD, MSc is a physician in internal medicine and addiction medicine. He has focused his clinical work and his research on how to improve care for populations facing challenges related to combinations of homelessness, complex illness, addiction and pain. Stefan first wrote about homelessness as a high school newspaper columnist. He developed a passion for fencing in middle age, and has loved video games since his teens. Stefan can be reached on Twitter @StefanKertesz

Saul and Stefan at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Gabon, West Africa, on a 4^th year medical school elective in 1992, with the Ogooué River in the background.

Disclaimer:The views expressed on this podcast are those of the hosts and their guests and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of their universities or of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government. This podcast is never intended to provide medical advice.