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Medical Matters with John Schumann

"Health Care comprises nearly one-fifth of our nation's economy. As such, we need content that intelligently addresses important topics in health. Medical Matters demystifies the complexities of health and health care in 21st-century America, featuring a doctor who has never forgotten his roots as a regular person." -- Dr. John SchumannMedical Matters host John Henning Schumann, M.D., is an internal medicine physician and writer (http://glasshospital.com). He has contributed to Slate, The Atlantic, Marketplace, and National Public Radio's health blog, Shots.Dr. Schumann also serves as guest host for Studio Tulsa on a range of health- and medical-related themes. He was appointed President of the University of Oklahoma – Tulsa in January 2015. You can find him on Twitter @GlassHospital.

Medical Matters: "Internal Medicine"

Public Radio Tulsa

Published October 31, 2014 at 3:23 PM CDT

For lovers of books and literature everywhere, it's fairly common to encounter a favorite author who's also a doctor: Arthur Conan Doyle, William Carlos Williams, Walker Percy, Anton Chekov, Robin Cook, Abraham Verghese, Oliver Sacks, Michael Crichton, et al. What's far less common is finding an English professor who decides (north of the age of forty, no less) to become a doctor -- yet such is the case with Terrence Holt, a physician and medical school prof based in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We speak with Dr. Holt about his well-regarded new collection of autobiographical tales, "Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories," and about his journey as a writer and doctor more generally.

We also chat with Scott Hensley, who writes and edits stories for Shots, the Health Blog from NPR News. Scott (who's kindly subbing today for Gary Schwitzer) joins us to address recent topics in the realm of medical news, namely Americans' ideas and concerns about Ebola and the "surrogates" used in certain medical studies. And finally, our commentator Alice Dreger ponders why and how doctors will sometimes compose narratives about their patients.