I got into healthcare at the Boston University School of Public Health, focusing on epidemiology, health law, and ethics. I then completed my medical studies at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology: Faculty of Medicine in Haifa, Israel.

Next I trained in Internal Medicine at Jacobi Medical Center, a busy public hospital in The Bronx and an affiliate of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In the Primary Care track I was a member of a Balint group and often worked in the Medical-Psychology clinic, learning to care for patients with complex physical and emotional illnesses. One patient I met in my training inspired me to publish an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine called The Mark of a Cane about grappling with the realities of growing old and frail.

I then completed fellowship training in Palliative Medicine and Clinical Ethics at Northwell Health (formerly North Shore LIJ), along with a certificate course in Clinical Bioethics at the Hofstra School of Law. I presented a poster at the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine’s Annual Assembly about a patient deciding on advance directives after a suicide attempt. I even started a Palliative Book Project for the Department of Palliative Care.

I am currently an attending physician of palliative medicine at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, program director of our Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship program, associate professor of Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and the vice chair of our ethics committee.

I also teach assorted topics in health humanities at Georgetown College. You can find more info about that here.

In addition to caring for patients with advanced and terminal illnesses, I have the fortune of writing and teaching on the topics that I love. I hope you enjoy this blog. I am passionate about healthcare and I believe we can do better.

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“Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little, or because I can conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate…”

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein