Beth Lown, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare
I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Dr. Beth Lown, Chief Medical Officer of The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare!
We dove deeply into the importance of bringing compassion to healthcare, and how organizations around the country are enrolling in The Schwartz Center Rounds to learn how to implement evidence based practices to support clinician-patient relationships and empathic listening through interdisciplinary conversations.
I encourage you to tune in to learn more about The Schwartz Center’s programs, initiatives and advocacy work to create compassionate organizational culture globally.
Topics of Discussion:
- Please tell our audience more about yourself, your story of how you became interested in beginning back compassion in patient care?
- Please share with us the mission and purpose of The Schwartz Center
- How are The Schwartz Center Rounds positively impacting healthcare on a global level?
- What is Stress First Aid and what are the 5 key elements?
- You also launched The Healing Healthcare Initiative- how is this initiative helping to foster a more empathic working environment?
- How were you able to adapt trauma informed care into your framework?
Listen to the complete podcast to hear the discussion.
Beth A. Lown, MD
Chief Medical Officer, The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Beth Lown has been interested in empathy, compassion, collaboration and relational and communication skills since beginning medical school four decades ago. This interest has deepened over her many years of clinical practice, and as a health professional educator and researcher. She has been an active participant in many national organizations dedicated to improving these attributes and skills.
She is the chief medical officer of the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the relationships among patients, families and clinicians and advancing compassionate health care. In this role she develops and implements programs, curricula and research. She speaks locally, nationally and internationally about empathy, compassion and communication, and teaches these attributes and skills to health professionals across the continuum of learning.
She has also served as president and board member of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare. This service included organizing collaborative relationships and conferences with the European Academy on Communication in Healthcare. She has served on several test materials development and standard setting committees, task forces and consulting teams for Clinical/Communication Skills for the National Board of Medical Examiners and the United States Medical Licensing Examination (Step 2 of the USMLE).
Dr. Lown is associate professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and director of Faculty Development at Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, MA. She has co-led several fellowships in medical education for faculty within the Harvard Medical School system, and is the director of the only longitudinal interprofessional fellowship in health professional education in the Harvard Medical School system.
Dr. Katie Cole
Affectionately called “The Healer’s Healer,” Dr. Katie Cole is an award-winning psychiatrist and consultant who works with physicians and organizations to reinvigorate their passion for medicine, create healthier work/life balance, and prevent costly burnout.