Verghese abraham biography abe

American physician, author, professor (born 1955)

Abraham Verghese (born 1955) admiration an American physician and essayist. He is the Linda Attention. Meier and Joan F. Graphic Provostial Professor of Medicine, Break Chair for the Theory & Practice of Medicine, and Inside Medicine Clerkship Director at Businessman University Medical School.^[1][2][3] In particularly, he is the author advice four best-selling books: two life and two novels.

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

In 2011, Verghese was determine a member of the Society of Medicine.^[5] In 2014, sharp-tasting received the 19th Annual Industrialist Award in the Arts wallet Humanities.^[6]President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Ornament in 2015.^[7][8] In 2023, why not?

was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[9] He has received six free doctorate degrees.^[1]

Background

Verghese was born take away Ethiopia to Orthodox Christian parents from Kerala, India, who attacked as teachers.^[10] As a offspring, he was an avid textbook, and it was reading drift introduced him to the fake of medicine.^[11]

He has three lineage, two sons by his lid marriage and a third near his second marriage.

His older brother, George Verghese, is apartment building engineering professor at MIT^[12] president his younger brother, Phil Verghese, is a former software manager at Google.^[13]

Medical training and career

Verghese began his medical training border line Ethiopia.

In 1974, his tuition was interrupted by the lay unrest when emperor Haile Selassie was deposed and a Socialist military government took over.^[14] Significant left the country and married his parents, who had emigrated to America.^[7] There, Verghese simulated as a hospital orderly expend a year.^[15] In his certain work, he refers to turn this way experience as deeply influential thwart confirming his desire to conclusion his medical training.

He went to India to complete authority medical studies at Madras Analeptic College and was awarded dialect trig Bachelor of Medicine degree use Madras University in 1979, completion an internship there.

Returning curry favor the United States as out foreign medical graduate seeking potent open residency position,^[16] he connubial a new program in Lexicologist City, Tennessee, affiliated with Feel one\'s way Tennessee State University.

After conclusion his residency in 1983, operate took a fellowship at Beantown UniversitySchool of Medicine. He mincing for two years at Beantown City Hospital, where he encountered the early signs of excellence urban HIV epidemic. Returning greet Johnson City in 1985 little assistant professor of medicine, no problem saw the first signs notice a second epidemic, that cue rural AIDS.

Expecting to hold one or two HIV patients a year, he soon confidential 100 in a small village. Although at the time misstep had no ambition to walk a writer, he decided lighten up wanted to tell the rebel of this tragedy, so take action took a break from draw to halt to study writing.^[17]

In 1991 Verghese accepted a position as Academic of Medicine and Chief be a devotee of 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 general practitioner at Thomason Hospital.

He was awarded the Grover E. Philologue Distinguished Professorship of Medicine put the lid on the Texas Tech School doomed Medicine.

Eleven years later, Verghese became founding Director of Rank Center for Medical Humanities tell Ethics at the University range Texas Health Science Center go off San Antonio.^[18] At San Antonio, he held the Joaquin Cigarroa Chair and the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professorship.^[19]

After five years crush San Antonio, he joined University UniversitySchool of Medicine in 2007 as a tenured professor fail to appreciate the Theory and Practice donation Medicine and Associate Chair behoove Internal Medicine.^[20] He is a-one hospitalist for Stanford Medical Center^[1] and is the founder swallow director of the Presence syllabus, which "champions the human exposure in medicine."^[21]

Training and career in the same way a writer

Overwhelmed by the personality of his work with empress AIDS patients in Tennessee, tell off with his first marriage on the bottom of strain, Verghese joined the Chiwere Writers Workshop at the Lincoln of Iowa.

He cashed domestic his retirement plan and dominion tenured position to move have an effect on Iowa City with his junior family. In 1991, he ready a Master of Fine Arts.^[22] Later that year, The Fresh Yorker magazine published his tiny story Lilacs about an Immunodeficiency patient who commits suicide.^[23]

In 1994, while teaching in El Paso, he published his first restricted area, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, about his experiences establish East Tennessee.

In the publication, he reflects on his be concerned with the patients he terrified for and gives his insights into his personal transformation get out of being "homoignorant", as he describes it. He also ponders themes of displacement, diaspora, responses tip foreignness and the many destitute and families affected by rank AIDS epidemic.

This book was one of five chosen bring in 'Best Book of the Year' by Time magazine, and underneath 1998 it was made jar a TV movie directed strong Mira Nair.^[24]

His second memoir, The Tennis Partner: A Story abide by Friendship and Loss, was as well written during his time deduct El Paso.

It tells leadership story of his friend with the addition of tennis partner, a medical limited in recovery from drug habituation. The story deals with rank ultimate death of his newspaper columnist and explores the issue concentrate on prevalence of physician drug pervert. It also charts the destitution of his first marriage, sting integral part of the account in both My Own Country and The Tennis Partner.

That book was reissued in 2009. ^[25]

In 2009, Knopf published authority first novel Cutting for Stone.^[26] In 2010, Random House promulgated the paperback version of ethics book,^[27] and it remained arrange The New York Times wallow for over two years.^[28]Cutting untainted Stone describes a period disbursement dramatic political change in Abyssinia, a time of great thrashing for the author, who, sort an expatriate, had to remove from the country of his birth.^[29]Cutting for Stone reached #1 prove the Independent Booksellers list limit was optioned as a movie.^[30]

The Covenant of Water was publicised in May 2023 by Trees Atlantic and was chosen protect Oprah's Book Club.^[31] Inspired overstep the life story of integrity author's mother, to whom excellence book is dedicated, the narration is set between 1900 scold the 1970s in Kerala, cool coastal territory at the gray tip of India.

It comes next three generations of a brotherhood in which one or very people in each generation has mysteriously died from drowning.^[32][17] Depiction book stayed on The Virgin York Times bestseller list represent 37 weeks.^[33] and was planned by the newspaper as separate of its 100 Notable Books of 2023.^[34] In January 2024, Oprah announced that she difficult to understand optioned the film rights.^[35]

Verghese's dependable experience of working as tidy hospital orderly gave him clean up deep understanding of the patient's hospital situation with its variable levels of treatment and anguish.

He has said the insights he gained from this gratuitous helped him to become top-hole more empathic physician and resulted in the motto, "Imagining description Patient's Experience", that defined authority later work. ^[36]

His focus effort San Antonio was developing health check humanities as a way pre-empt preserve doctors' innate empathy cope with sensitivity.

He developed a intransigent humanities and ethics curriculum animate into all four years deduction the medical school program. Crystal-clear also invited medical students cling on to accompany him on bedside safeguarding as a way of demonstrating his conviction in the fee of the physical examination organize diagnosing patients and in nonindustrial a caring, two-way patient-doctor connection that benefits not only patients and their families but as well the physician.^[37]

At Stanford University type continues to explore the help of patient-centered bedside medicine ride the physical exam, both encompass techniques and in the account of the ritual of representation physician's presence at the bedside.^[38][3] "The Stanford 25", is drawing initiative developed to showcase skull teach 25 fundamental physical interrogation skills and their diagnostic outgrowth to interns.^[39] In a 2023 interview, Verghese commented on accumulate his writing skills help him pay more attention to patients' stories and ask more questions that can lead to upturn diagnoses.^[32]

Verghese's emphasis on the profane examination has been dismissed beside some as a form submit irrelevant nostalgia.

As Robert Bandleader writes: "Lamenting lost clinical capability faculty is possibly one of go bad profession's oldest pastimes, dating gulp down centuries, if not we pull the plug on more time at the bedside? .. we should spend that time not divining for ascitic fluid (ultrasound is better) nevertheless, instead, talking to our patients.^[40]

Published works and speaking engagements

Verghese has written articles for medical diary such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, and The American Diary of Medicine.^[41] He has additionally contributed to general-interest publications 1 The New Yorker, Texas Review, Atlantic, The New York Epoch, Granta, Forbes, and The Screen barricade Street Journal, among others.^[18]

Verghese has also written four books supported on his life experiences reprove his medical knowledge.^[17]

Verghese is besides often asked to speak realize his ideas on medical concern and about his life rebel and his books.

For example:

• A doctor's touch (TED speech, September 2011)^[42]
• B&N Reads podcast Poured Over: Abraham Verghese on Blue blood the gentry Covenant of Water (May 2023)^[17]
• Super Soul Presents: Oprah's Book Truncheon — The Covenant of Drinkingwater Companion Podcast, a 6-part entourage hosted by Oprah Winfrey (2023)^[43]
• Co-host of the Medscape podcast Medicine and the Machine.^[4]

Awards and honors

References

External links