Zara Cooper

Zara Cooper is an acute care and trauma surgeon, surgical intensivist, and surgical palliative-care researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General Brigham. She is a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, Executive Vice Chair of Surgery, Kessler Director of the Center for Surgery and Public Health, and director of the Center for Geriatric Surgery at Mass General Brigham.

Patient Stories Expose Medicine’s Failure to Hear Illness

Patients in the discussion described arriving in medicine through identities already waiting for them: anxious woman, easygoing patient, bad patient, racialized risk, redemptive survivor. Meghan O’Rourke, Jonathan Gleason and Walela Nehanda argue that patient stories matter because they contest those imposed narratives and reveal what clinical categories can miss. The piece makes the case that patient testimony can expose diagnostic uncertainty, racism and structural neglect, but that listening requires time, resources and systems capable of receiving what patients know.

The Aspen InstituteJun 26, 202618 min read