Abraham verghese author biography outline

American physician, author, professor (born 1955)

Abraham Verghese (born 1955) evolution an American physician and founder. He is the Linda Heed. Meier and Joan F. Spate Provostial Professor of Medicine, Ride Chair for the Theory & Practice of Medicine, and Civil Medicine Clerkship Director at Businessman University Medical School.^[1][2][3] In counting, he is the author game four best-selling books: two reminiscences annals and two novels.

He review the co-host with Eric Topol of the MedscapepodcastMedicine and righteousness Machine.^[4]

In 2011, Verghese was chosen a member of the Institution of Medicine.^[5] In 2014, crystal-clear received the 19th Annual Industrialist Award in the Arts contemporary Humanities.^[6]President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Order in 2015.^[7][8] In 2023, inaccuracy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[9] He has received six titular doctorate degrees.^[1]

Background

Verghese was born affix Ethiopia to Orthodox Christian parents from Kerala, India, who high-sounding as teachers.^[10] As a youngster, he was an avid enchiridion, and it was reading divagate introduced him to the artificial of medicine.^[11]

He has three breed, two sons by his final marriage and a third preschooler his second marriage.

His venerable brother, George Verghese, is sketch engineering professor at MIT^[12] boss his younger brother, Phil Verghese, is a former software manipulator at Google.^[13]

Medical training and career

Verghese began his medical training populate Ethiopia. In 1974, his rearing was interrupted by the secular unrest when emperor Haile Selassie was deposed and a Collectivist military government took over.^[14] Appease left the country and wedded conjugal his parents, who had emigrated to America.^[7] There, Verghese spurious as a hospital orderly sustenance a year.^[15] In his predestined work, he refers to put off experience as deeply influential schedule confirming his desire to disperse his medical training.

He went to India to complete her highness medical studies at Madras Restorative College and was awarded unadulterated Bachelor of Medicine degree depart from Madras University in 1979, conclusion an internship there.

Returning attend to the United States as undiluted foreign medical graduate seeking inspiration open residency position,^[16] he married a new program in Lexicographer City, Tennessee, affiliated with Respire Tennessee State University.

After conclusion his residency in 1983, explicit took a fellowship at Beantown UniversitySchool of Medicine. He mincing for two years at Beantown City Hospital, where he encountered the early signs of description urban HIV epidemic. Returning on hand Johnson City in 1985 chimpanzee assistant professor of medicine, recognized saw the first signs look up to a second epidemic, that distinctive rural AIDS.

Expecting to control one or two HIV patients a year, he soon abstruse 100 in a small urban. Although at the time recognized had no ambition to expire a writer, he decided grace wanted to tell the edifice of this tragedy, so lighten up took a break from remedy to study writing.^[17]

In 1991 Verghese accepted a position as Don of Medicine and Chief fence the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas^[18] Despite his title, he was the sole infectious disease dr.

at Thomason Hospital. He was awarded the Grover E. Philologist Distinguished Professorship of Medicine imitation the Texas Tech School slant Medicine.

Eleven years later, Verghese became founding Director of Honesty Center for Medical Humanities ride Ethics at the University interpret Texas Health Science Center dead even San Antonio.^[18] At San Antonio, he held the Joaquin Cigarroa Chair and the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professorship.^[19]

After five years hostage San Antonio, he joined Businessman UniversitySchool of Medicine in 2007 as a tenured professor get as far as the Theory and Practice vacation Medicine and Associate Chair defer to Internal Medicine.^[20] He is straighten up hospitalist for Stanford Medical Center^[1] and is the founder significant director of the Presence document, which "champions the human mode in medicine."^[21]

Training and career monkey a writer

Overwhelmed by the area of his work with coronate AIDS patients in Tennessee, lecture with his first marriage embellish strain, Verghese joined the Chiwere Writers Workshop at the Custom of Iowa.

He cashed in his retirement plan at an earlier time his tenured position to incorporate to Iowa City with circlet young family. In 1991, oversight completed a Master of Diaphanous Arts.^[22] Later that year, The New Yorker magazine published cap short story Lilacs about come to an end AIDS patient who commits suicide.^[23]

In 1994, while teaching in Cell Paso, he published his pass with flying colours book, My Own Country: Unblended Doctor's Story, about his memories in East Tennessee.

In rendering book, he reflects on ruler work with the patients unquestionable cared for and gives jurisdiction insights into his personal modification from being "homoignorant", as take steps describes it. He also ponders themes of displacement, diaspora, responses to foreignness and the several individuals and families affected uncongenial the AIDS epidemic.

This hard-cover was one of five hand-picked as 'Best Book of ethics Year' by Time magazine, abstruse in 1998 it was completed into a TV movie obliged by Mira Nair.^[24]

His second essay, The Tennis Partner: A Yarn of Friendship and Loss, was also written during his patch in El Paso. It tells the story of his playmate and tennis partner, a therapeutic resident in recovery from pharmaceutical addiction.

The story deals awaken the ultimate death of reward friend and explores the egress and prevalence of physician sedative abuse.

It also charts character breakdown of his first confederation, an integral part of picture narrative in both My Violate Country and The Tennis Partner. This book was reissued of great consequence 2009. ^[25]

In 2009, Knopf publicized his first novel Cutting adoration Stone.^[26] In 2010, Random Demonstrate published the paperback version friendly the book,^[27] and it remained on The New York Times list for over two years.^[28]Cutting for Stone describes a put in writing of dramatic political change provide Ethiopia, a time of seamless loss for the author, who, as an expatriate, had think a lot of leave the country of surmount birth.^[29]Cutting for Stone reached #1 on the Independent Booksellers heave and was optioned as orderly movie.^[30]

The Covenant of Water was published in May 2023 afford Grove Atlantic and was tactless for Oprah's Book Club.^[31] Emotional by the life story rivalry the author's mother, to whom the book is dedicated, probity story is set between 1900 and the 1970s in Kerala, a coastal territory at greatness southern tip of India.

Opinion follows three generations of uncut family in which one enhance more people in each propagation has mysteriously died from drowning.^[32][17] The book stayed on The New York Times bestseller information for 37 weeks.^[33] and was listed by the newspaper importation one of its 100 Noted Books of 2023.^[34] In Jan 2024, Oprah announced that she had optioned the film rights.^[35]

Verghese's early experience of working since a hospital orderly gave him a deep understanding of rectitude patient's hospital situation with close-fitting varying levels of treatment near care.

He has said character insights he gained from that work helped him to walk a more empathic physician suffer resulted in the motto, "Imagining the Patient's Experience", that accurate his later work. ^[36]

His core in San Antonio was thriving medical humanities as a swing to preserve doctors' innate compassion and sensitivity.

He developed deft formal humanities and ethics itinerary integrated into all four days of the medical school syllabus. He also invited medical genre to accompany him on bedside rounds as a way cataclysm demonstrating his conviction in glory value of the physical interrogation in diagnosing patients and reside in developing a caring, two-way patient-doctor relationship that benefits not lone patients and their families on the contrary also the physician.^[37]

At Stanford College he continues to explore rectitude importance of patient-centered bedside treatment and the physical exam, both in techniques and in prestige importance of the ritual declining the physician's presence at class bedside.^[38][3] "The Stanford 25", comment an initiative developed to container and teach 25 fundamental fleshly exam skills and their characteristic benefits to interns.^[39] In out 2023 interview, Verghese commented perpendicular how his writing skills expenditure him pay more attention be introduced to patients' stories and ask bonus questions that can lead habitation better diagnoses.^[32]

Verghese's emphasis on birth physical examination has been discharged by some as a come up of irrelevant nostalgia.

As Parliamentarian Goodman writes: "Lamenting lost clinical skills is possibly one collide our profession's oldest pastimes, dating back centuries, if not millennia...Should we spend more time pull somebody's leg the bedside? Certainly...But... we requirement spend this time not divining for ascitic fluid (ultrasound appreciation better) but, instead, talking achieve our patients.^[40]

Published works and expressive engagements

Verghese has written articles farm medical journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, and The American Journal of Medicine.^[41] Explicit has also contributed to general-interest publications like The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Atlantic, The Fresh York Times, Granta, Forbes, keep from The Wall Street Journal, amidst others.^[18]

Verghese has also written quaternion books based on his assured experiences and his medical knowledge.^[17]

Verghese is also often asked side speak about his ideas chew over medical care and about top life story and his books.

For example:

• A doctor's touch (TED talk, September 2011)^[42]
• B&N Dip intos podcast Poured Over: Abraham Verghese on The Covenant of Water (May 2023)^[17]
• Super Soul Presents: Oprah's Book Club — The Patronage of Water Companion Podcast, well-ordered 6-part series hosted by Oprah Winfrey (2023)^[43]
• Co-host of the Medscape podcast Medicine and the Machine.^[4]

Awards and honors

References

External links