The Pain of Others | Haider Warraich, MD

Jan 17, 2023

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Storytelling, pain, rage, and cultural competency are just some of the themes we will explore in this episode. Our guest, Haider Warraich, MD, grew up and went to medical school in Pakistan before completing residency at Harvard Medical School and fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at Duke University Medical Center. Today, he is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the associate director of the Heart Failure Program at the VA Boston Health Care System. A prolific writer, he contributes regularly to the New York Times, Washington Post, and others. He is the author of three books on medicine for the general audience, most recently 2022’s The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain, which examines the nature of pain not only as a physical, but also a historical and cultural experience. Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Warraich compares his medical experiences in Pakistan and in the US, discusses why he strives to incorporate palliative care into his cardiology work, and offers an impassioned critique of how modern medicine fails to address patients' suffering.

In this episode, you will hear about:

How Dr. Warraich went from thinking of his medical training as an “arranged marriage” to loving the career - 2:10
How Dr. Warraich stays connected to his patients and his work despite the intense pressure and responsibility he experiences on a daily basis - 7:03
What drew Dr. Warraich to cardiology and end-of-life care - 13:22
Dr. Warraich’s reflections on the gaps in the care of patients with heart disease and how he now strives to reform the practice of cardiology - 17:33
A discussion of how the medical culture of Pakistan differs from the United States and how they can be shockingly similar - 22:06
How Tom Brady, the football quarterback, inspires Dr. Warraich to stay connected to the emotional core of his practice - 28:49
Why it’s important to stay in a field if you care about it, especially if you hope to change and improve it - 35:37
Dr. Warraich’s reflections on the nature of pain and how he hopes to change our cultural conversation around it - 41:38
How acute pain and chronic pain are very different processes and how we can address suffering as a subject and deeply personal experience - 45:17

You can follow Dr. Warraich on Twitter @haiderwarraich.

Dr. Haider Warraich is the author of several books, including The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain, Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life, and State of the Heart: Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease.

In this episode, we discuss the article “At the Edge of the Inside” by David Brooks, for the New York Times, and the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

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