Jay Baruch is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Alpert Medical School of Brown University, where he directs the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Scholarly Concentration. His work as an ER doctor, a writer of fiction and essays, and medical educator and keynote speaker, share an appetite for messiness and problem finding. He believes we should never be afraid to take risks, to think differently, and be more creative, especially when we feel stuck. He also thinks stories will always be our most innovative technology, followed by coffee and dark chocolate.
His upcoming book of non-fiction, narrative essays: Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER (MIT Press, fall 2022), takes the reader into small but challenging experiences in the ER that receive less attention. We move from story to story, one emotional place after another, feel the weight of searching for answers when we haven't figured out the questions.
Jay Baruch is also the author of two award-winning short fiction collections, "What's Left Out" (Kent State University Press, 2015) and "Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers" (Kent State University Press, 2007).
His academic work emerged out of necessity. When faced with uncertainty and ambiguity in the ER, he leaned on creative writing skills to help understand patients' stories. He also considers teaching a creative conversation with people with different expertise and ways of looking at the world. His interdisciplinary collaborators have included brilliant museum educators, designers, and artists.
His writing has appeared in numerous print and online medical and literary journals and lay media outlets, including the STAT, Boston Globe, WBUR Cognoscenti, New England Journal of Medicine, Academic Medicine, KevinMD, and others.
He's been a Director-at-Large, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; the medical humanities section chair for the American College of Emergency Physicians; and faculty fellow at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. In addition, he received the inaugural Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Gold Humanism Award.
