Katie Couric Commencement Address Urges Medical School Graduates to “Talk to Your Patients in Human”

Katie Couric, best known for her years as a broadcaster and outspoken advocate for cancer research, recently addressed the graduating class at UMass Medical School.  Her speech focused on the power of humanity and the irreplaceable role that empathy plays in the doctor-patient relationship, especially in our increasingly technological world. 

Her speech included a quote from Jeremy Faust, MD and Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today. “My friend, Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, put it this way: ‘Use every bit of technology that you possibly can to prepare for each patient. But then drop all that and do the one thing that technology never can do: Look at your patient and think, ‘What would I do if this were my mother or my brother?’ No machine will ever be able to know that feeling and it will change what you do, more often than you’d expect.’”

After Couric’s speech, Faust expanded upon his quote in a blog post published on MedPage Today. In it, he provides tactical advice about what “speaking human” and the marriage of technology and human connection can look like for a physician. 

We’ve provided highlights from his post here, as well as links to the full text of Couric’s speech and Faust’s blog below.

• Introduce Yourself. Not only should you introduce yourself, but ensure that the patient also identifies themself by name. This does the double-duty of starting politely and also confirming that you are in the right place with the right person. Take the time also to meet and understand the role of other family members or friends who are present. 

• Make the Human Connection. Create a connection through the means available. When applicable, Faust said that he will share a relevant personal struggle that parallels the patient’s experience. This can help him to demonstrate his understanding of what a patient is facing as a person. Additionally, he mentions that he’ll often invoke his own family as he discusses potential options. This communicates to the patient that he is thinking through his advice to them with no less rigor or personalization than he would his own family. 

• Make Your Professional Experience a Part of the Conversation. Establish credibility by being upfront with how experienced you are with a particular situation. Let the patient know that you’ve seen similar situations often (or, for newer physicians, that you have observed similar cases and are working in partnership with an experienced attending physician). Conversely, if you don’t have the experience, make sure to let the patient know that you’re calling on the advice of someone who does. Either way, providing the patient with an honest evaluation establishes confidence and trust. 

• Make Technology an Open Part of Your Workflow. Use technology to gather ideas, or to level-set with a patient who you think has already turned to technology. Share your use of technology with them as well as your assessment of the findings. Review with the patient which ideas are worthy of exploration, as well as those that are not. Faust contends that technology is a meaningful resource for physicians. “If I look something up, I'll tell a patient. That’s not ‘cheating.’ That’s going the extra mile,” he wrote. 

Find the full text of Katie Couric’s speech here.

Find the full text of Dr. Jeremy Faust’s blog here.

INSEAD Announces Immersive Virtual Reality Masterclass for Global Executive MBAs

INSEAD Business School just announced that it would be further incorporating virtual reality (VR) into the learning experience of Global Executive MBA students by offering an immersive, masterclass titled “Mission to Mars.” The simulation will refine students’ management skills and provide an opportunity to exercise decision making in situations filled with ambiguity. After the experience, students will debrief their experiences together. 

INSEAD’s announcement follows a study by PWC on the efficacy of virtual reality (VR) based training for soft skills development. The study compared results for three similar cohorts who received training via different delivery mechanisms: classroom, e-learn and v-learn (VR). The results showed that the VR learners were four times faster to learn than classroom learners, 275 percent more confident in applying the material, 3.75 times more connected to the material than classroom learners, and four times more focused than e-learners. 

Ithai Stern, the Academic Director for INSEAD’s VR Immersive Learning Initiative, has previously provided insights into the lessons INSEAD has learned from experiences with VR, in the classroom and remotely, as a learning tool for its MBA and Executive Education students. Similar to the findings of the PWC study, Stern has found VR to be highly effective, and also noted that the best ways incorporate VR are through individual study and case studies. 

“In INSEAD courses, a VR headset, which is responsive to real-time head movements, allows a unique experience for each participant within the framework of fixed content (e.g., a boardroom scenario, a factory tour, or a market). As a result, participants can think through a specific situation in a low-risk, controlled environment, testing decisions and assumptions without being judged by fellow participants—and without being unduly influenced by any higher-ups that may also be in attendance. To benefit the group as a whole, these individual virtual experiences are typically preceded and followed by in-depth shared discussion,” he wrote.

Stern also acknowledges the unique ability of VR to promote empathy within students by placing them into new contexts previously not possible. “For example, it's the first time in history where, when I teach directors, I can literally position the 50 plus white male in the classroom in the body of the only black woman on the board of directors,” he said.

Stern, however, does point out that while VR is an excellent supplement to the business school curriculum, it is not a replacement for the “knowledge, feedback, and guidance” that professors, and classroom discourse provides students after their VR simulations. Other business school leaders, interviewed by the Financial Times on the use of technology in business school, take a more cautious approach to the use of VR suggesting that while it could be useful to simulate a real-life situation, it may be less practical due to its individualized nature and the equipment demands. 

Narrative Medicine Helps Physicians Gain Empathy, Make Connections, and Accept Difficult Experiences

Creative writing may not be the first course that comes to mind when you think about a pre-med or medical school curriculum. But, writing—along with other arts and humanities courses—can play a vital role in preparing medical students for life as a physician. 

Rita Charon, along with a multidisciplinary group of scholars, founded the discipline of narrative medicine in 2003, in response to the increasingly bureaucratic direction of medical care. Narrative medicine’s goal is to recenter physicians on the humanity of their patients by providing tools to allow physicians to contextualize patients outside of the hospital setting and uncover ways to connect by considering a patient’s pain, stories, life, and loved ones. Charon describes narrative medicine as a “...commitment to understanding patients’ lives, caring for the caregivers, and giving voice to the suffering.” 

The benefits of incorporating narrative medicine, or the study of arts and humanities into the medical curriculum are clear. In 2010, Columbia Medical Students were required to take a half-semester arts and humanities course in narrative medicine, and these students were then interviewed in focus groups about the experience. The findings, published in the Journal of Academic Medicine in 2014, were summarized: “Students’ comments articulated the known features of narrative medicine—attention, representation, and affiliation—and endorsed all three as being valuable to professional identity development. They spoke of the salience of their work in narrative medicine to medicine and medical education and its dividends of critical thinking, reflection, and pleasure.” 

In addition to promoting empathy and connection, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Vitez, Director of Narrative Medicine at Temple University’s School of Medicine, spoke to the value that writing can provide in helping students work through complex and painful experiences. He described a medical student who wrote a poem after a difficult day in her psychiatric rotation. “It helped her process her emotions and turn a really bad day into something valuable,” he said. 

Narrative medicine can also bolster physicians who are struggling with symptoms of burnout. “No one was talking about clinician burnout at that time. But, as narrative medicine programs began to spread across the country, some physicians trained in its principles began to see how it can protect clinicians from feeling a sense of depersonalization and other symptoms of burnout,” Dr. Charon told Neurology Today. In the same article, Sneha Mantri, MD, MS, and Assistant Professor of Neurology at Duke University School of Medicine, described how her struggle caring for critically ill patients during residency led her to seek an MS in Narrative Medicine. In her view, the degree gave her the tools to return to medical practice and deal with the “burnout-inducing frustration of treating chronically ill patients with difficult-to-manage symptoms” and replace it with empathy for the patient’s perspective and the reminder “that knowing medical facts is just one part of caring for a patient.”

If you are a premedical or medical student with an interest in the arts and humanities, pursue it! It will likely play an invaluable role in preparing you to analyze, contextualize, and show up for patients with empathy and understanding. And as you prepare your applications for medical school, residency, or fellowship, be sure to highlight the skills that you have gained through previous humanities coursework and experiences, and the perspectives you have gained. 

Examples of narrative medical texts here: 

“How to Tell a Mother Her Child Is Dead,” Naomi Rosenberg, MD, New York Times

“What We Talk About When We Talk About the Code,” Lilli Schussler, JAMA Cardiology

Related blogs:

Covid Crisis Brings Attention to the Need for Humanities in Medical School Curriculum