Theresa Brown, Ph.D., BSN, RN
Nurse and bestselling author
Danielle Ofri, MD, Ph.D.
Physician at Bellevue Hospital and clinical professor of medicine at New York University
Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient
BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: Attendees who purchase a copy of Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient from FAN’s partner bookseller The Book Stall are invited to attend an AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Ms. Brown that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.
From the mammogram that would change her life through her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, New York Times bestselling author Theresa Brown, Ph.D., BSN, RN, tells a poignant and powerful story about having breast cancer in the United States in her new memoir, Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient. She presents an honest – and rare – look at struggling with the illness while navigating the maze of American health care from the unique standpoint of both a patient and a practitioner.
Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit health care industry “cures” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for. As she did so brilliantly in her New York Times bestseller, The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, Brown relays the unforgettable details of her daily life—the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the bureaucratic frustrations—but this time from her new perch as a patient, looking back at some of her own cases and considering what she didn’t know then about the warping effects of fear and the healing virtues of compassion.
A nurse and writer who lives in Pittsburgh, Brown has been a guest on MSNBC Live and NPR’s Fresh Air. Her BSN is from the University of Pittsburgh, and she received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago.
Brown will be in conversation with Danielle Ofri, MD, Ph.D., one of the foremost voices in the medical world today, shining an unflinching light on the realities of healthcare and speaking passionately about the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. Ofri is a primary-care internist at Bellevue Hospital and clinical professor of medicine at New York University. She is founder and editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, the first literary journal to arise from a medical setting, and her writing appears in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Lancet, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Her newest book is When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error.
This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on our website and YouTube channel.
Event Sponsors
- Bennett Day School
- Catherine Cook School
- Christ Church Winnetka
- Compass Health Center
- Countryside Day School
- Evanston Township High School D202
- Family Service Center
- Family Service of Glencoe
- Fusion Academy
- Glencoe D35
- Lake Michigan Association of Independent Schools
- Loyola Academy
- Mindful Psychology Associates PC
- New Trier High School D203
- New Trier Parents’ Association
- North Shore Country Day
- Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy
- Regina Dominican College Preparatory High School
- Roycemore School
- Science & Arts Academy
- Stevenson High School D125
- The Family Institute at Northwestern University
- Winnetka D36
- Wolcott College Prep
- Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart