This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alda, and this is Clear and Vivid, Conversations about Connecting and Communicating.

We want a doctor that can feel free to apologize to us.

If we have a healthcare system in which healthcare professionals are penalized for being vulnerable,

it is very, very hard for them to admit mistakes.

And that, just that is incredibly dangerous, right?

If you're in the OR and the surgeon feels like they can't even tell the anesthesiologist that they've messed up,

right, let alone the patient afterwards, this is not safe, this isn't safe for anyone involved.

That's Laurel Braitman. She's expert at helping medical professionals communicate with

their colleagues and patients, even admitting mistakes. And she does it by encouraging doctors

and caregivers to write about their experiences, to tell the stories of their lives.

Her own story is a complicated one. In her memoir called What Looks Like Bravery,

an epic journey through loss to love, she tells us how, despite a successful and varied career,

she spent decades struggling with grief. It's a story she now realizes she had to write before

she could help others write theirs. Your new autobiography called What Looks Like Bravery,

has a really interesting title. Because in the book, you say that What Looks Like Bravery

is really being afraid of something else, even more. So were you doing reckless things that weren't

as scary as the thing you were keeping away from? Great question. Yeah, I think what I would consider

reckless things, you know, many other people might not consider reckless things, or let me say this,

I was doing things that I thought I was supposed to think were brave, or meanwhile, the things I was

scared of were things that I saw people doing around me all the time. It didn't seem to scare them at

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