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Rachel Fleishman is an attending neonatologist at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, and Founder & Director of the Narrative Medicine Program for Einstein's Urban Core. When not caring for infants and attending high risk deliveries and training pediatric residents and neonatal fellows, she teaches narrative medicine throughout the medical center, facilitates storytelling sessions, and writes creative nonfiction. Through her writing and teaching, she hopes to highlight how humanity and humility are central to the care of patients and their families. She aspires to link her interests in patient safety and narrative medicine over the breadth of her career by fostering a culture of safety grounded in empathic understanding and narrative humility.
Her essays touch on themes such as motherhood, perinatal ethics, pregnancy, and life and death in the neonatal intensive care unit. Her essays appear in literary magazines, newspapers, prestigious medical journals, and medical humanities publications. Read her work here.
Nazanin Moghbeli is an Iranian-American cardiologist and artist. She is the Director of the Cardiac Care Unit at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College. She founded and directed the first Penn Women's Cardiovascular Center at Pennsylvania Hospital, then served as Associate Director of the Women's Cardiovascular Center at Penn Radnor prior to joining Einstein. She received her medical and public health degrees at Johns Hopkins University, while studying at the Maryland Institute of Art in the evenings. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a cardiovascular fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a committed medical educator and has designed innovative curricula in the medical humanities for programs throughout the United States and Europe.
Her art studio is located in Manayunk, PA and she is part of the Philadelphia based Femme Collective. In her art, Nazanin grapples with her dual identities as an Iranian and American, artist and physician, to shed light on what happens when what seems disparate comes together. Her works have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Learn more about her work here.
Ahashta Johnson is Medical Director of Einstein Medical Center Montgomery (EMCM) Palliative Care, Core Faculty Member of EMCM Internal Medicine Residency, Faculty Member of EMCM Palliative Medicine Fellowship and Chairperson of EMCM Ethics Committee. In addition to focusing on maximizing quality of life for her palliative medicine patients, supporting end of life care for Einstein Montgomery Hospice patients, leading committee review of ethical matters at EMCM, educating and mentoring residents and fellows at EMCM, she has special interests in effective communication, compassion in medicine and narrative medicine. Through training in Vital Talk communication techniques, she teaches effective communication skills through role play. She has been an active participant in Einstein's Narrative Medicine Program since inception. Her newest endeavor is co leading EMCM Schwartz Rounds Planning Committee, to hold Schwartz Rounds fostering compassion in medicine.
Erica Harris, MD
Erica Harris is an attending emergency physician at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, the Medical Director of Einstein's Trauma Intervention Program and an Associate Director of Jefferson's Center for Injury Research and Prevention. She completed a fellowship in Injury and Public Health Research at Drexel University where she worked with clients of the Healing Hurt People violence intervention program. In her work with victims of violent injury, she has employed digital storytelling and the visual and creative arts both as a therapeutic modality and channel through which to engender compassion in others for victims of violence, drawing attention to the gun violence epidemic. She also serves as the faculty advisor for Airway, the resident-run story telling forum for emergency physicians. She has published creative nonfiction essays and a short film exploring work on the frontlines during the pandemic, empathy in physician training and the perspective of being a physician-turned-patient.