Using Your Stories of Suffering to Connect with Patients

Reception will start at 4:30 in VEC Lobby followed by the Lecture from 5:00–6:15 in VEC 201.

About the Talk

At the heart of many fraught issues in health care—from inequities to end-of-life decisions—lies the doctor–patient relationship. Sometimes relating to patients can be challenging without shared language, culture, or values. But the tapestry of human experience has a common thread: suffering. We can better understand and communicate with our patients using our own stories of hardship and loss.

About the Speaker

Tess Russell, MD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, is a Texas transplant to New York City. She completed her medical training at the University of Texas at Houston Health Science Center and moved to New York in 2005 to complete Anesthesiology training at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where she also served as Chief Resident. Upon graduation, she stayed on at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and became the Associate Residency Program Director, Director of the Clinical Internship, and Director of Simulation Education. In 2014, she left St. Luke’s-Roosevelt to pursue additional training in Critical Care Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Currently at Columbia University, she is an Associate Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology at CUMC and has a particular interest in resident and attending wellness. She serves as the Director of the Physician Wellbeing Initiative in the Department of Anesthesiology, which has created a novel longitudinal curriculum surrounding wellness and resilience for trainees. Her academic interests are centered on physician flourishing, and she is a Physician Well-Being Lead for the Dean’s Office of Well-Being. Additionally, she has won Teacher of the Year by the Anesthesiology residents and won CTICU Attending of the Year twice, and was voted Physician of the Year at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital by her nursing colleagues in 2020. Dr. Russell lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

About the Lectureship

The annual Lisio Family Lecture was endowed by Drs. Arnold Lisio and Anne Moore to bring nationally renowned speakers to Columbia University Medical Center to address important ethical issues at the core of medical practice. The Lisio family’s vision is that this lectureship contribute to the ethical formation of medical students and the flourishing of the doctor-patient relationship.

An internist, Dr. Lisio came to Columbia in 1961, and led an active clinical practice until his retirement in 2015. Dr. Moore is a 1969 graduate of Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. She is a medical oncologist on the faculty of Weill Cornell Medicine.

Please email [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns. More details about Columbia's Center for Clinical Medical Ethics can be found here: https://columbiamedicine.org/ethicscenter/index.html

Host or Publisher Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics