Transforming Medical Communication and Patient Empathy

At the age of twenty-two, Dr Grace Spence Green’s spine was broken at the fourth thoracic vertebra. One day, she was in hospital supporting patients, the next she was fighting for her own life.

As Grace came to understand her new life as a wheelchair user, she also had to reconceptualise how she could be both a doctor and a patient, and her now deeply personal understanding of society’s persistent ableism. She joins Dr Xand van Tulleken to share her journey, from how people’s perception of her post-injury changed dramatically due to ableist mindsets, to how her own experience navigating the medical system as a patient helped her better understand her own patients, to how her patients have in turn helped her in surprising and deeply human reciprocity. Grace shares her own passion for disability advocacy, and calls for us all to change the narrative about disability and ableism.

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