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Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Laurel Braitman: Writing Wrongs

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Bobi NYC

Science, Society & Culture, Comedy

4.83.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A life full of adventure while struggling with grief led her to what she does so effectively today – helping doctors to level with colleagues and patients through storytelling when things go wrong.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

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

0:06.8

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

0:11.8

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

0:27.6

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

0:32.0

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

0:37.9

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

0:42.2

And that, just that is incredibly dangerous, right?

0:46.3

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

0:53.1

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

1:00.4

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

1:05.6

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

1:12.0

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

1:18.4

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

1:23.5

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

1:30.0

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

1:36.7

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

1:43.8

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

1:49.2

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

1:55.7

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

2:02.2

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

2:08.4

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

2:13.3

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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