The Health Design Podcast

Teaching Medical Narratives: Pre-Health Students and the Future of Human-Centered Care

What happens when you teach storytelling and reflection to future doctors before they ever set foot in medical school? In this episode of the Health Design Podcast, host Moyez Jiwa sits down with Eric Last, a veteran primary care internist, and Genie N. Giaimo, an associate professor of writing studies and rhetoric at Hofstra University, to unpack their groundbreaking course that brings medical narratives into the undergraduate classroom.

Together, they discuss how immersing pre-health students in the humanities — through writing, storytelling, and honest conversation about illness, caregiving, and loss — can fundamentally reshape how the next generation of clinicians relates to patients. Eric and Genie share moving moments from their classroom: students opening up about their own chronic conditions, caregiving responsibilities, and encounters with a healthcare system that too often fails to listen.

The conversation also confronts the structural forces threatening humanistic medicine — the rise of concierge practices, the commodification of care, physician burnout, and the financial pressures that push young clinicians onto a hamster wheel. Can a new generation of students, armed with narrative tools and a commitment to connection, push back against a system that treats patients as widgets? And what does it cost — personally and professionally — to choose mission over money?

Topics covered:

Why pre-health undergraduates need the humanities now, not in medical school
Writing as a tool for professional resuscitation and burnout prevention
The tension between relationship-based care and a commodified healthcare system
Concierge medicine, access, and the ethics of who gets heard
How students are already advocating for themselves and their future patients
Guests:
Eric Last — primary care internist, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra
Genie N. Giaimo — associate professor of writing studies and rhetoric, Hofstra University

Professor Gary David returns to The Health Design Podcast to explore how we can design experiences that foster connection, belonging, and shared meaning — especially in healthcare settings.

Drawing on his background as a sociologist and experience designer, Gary discusses the concept of "communities of the moment" — how shared experiences, from ringing the bell after chemotherapy to using inclusive pronouns like "we" and "team," can elevate everyday interactions into something greater than the sum of their parts.

The conversation takes a deeply personal turn when Gary shares the story of his daughter's surgery at a Children's Hospital and the baffling, jargon-filled denial letter he received from his insurance company. It becomes a case study in systemic misalignment — where different parts of a healthcare system work against each other, leaving patients and caregivers confused, anxious, and financially vulnerable.

Gary introduces his upcoming book, The Un-Wow: Your Blueprint to Experience Design of All Kinds, which argues that the most meaningful experiences often come not from grand "wow" moments but from small, everyday acts — what he calls micro-affirmations. He makes the case that everyone in a healthcare system, from surgeons to coders to cleaning staff, plays a role in shaping the patient experience, and that technical competence alone doesn't make someone a good leader.

The episode closes with a reflection on workplace culture, the difference between doing and leading, and why experience design is ultimately a people business.

Learn more at theunwow.com and listen to Gary's podcast, Experience by Design.

Dr. Eugene Manley joins the Health Design podcast to share a harrowing personal experience navigating the US healthcare system after foot surgery. While on Medicaid, he encountered medical racism, falsified chart notes, and a hospital system determined to discharge him before he was ready — despite his surgeon's objections. He describes how physical therapists misrepresented his condition in his records, blocking his access to skilled nursing care and leaving him vulnerable at his most fragile moment.

The conversation broadens to explore how capable people are misread by systems not designed to understand them. Eugene discusses his late-diagnosed ADHD, the cognitive cost of masking in workplaces, and how neurodivergent individuals — especially those who are also Black or from underserved backgrounds — are forced to fit boxes that waste their potential. He and host Moyez Jiwa examine the economic and human cost when talent walks out the door because it doesn't conform, and the troubling rollback of DEI initiatives in the US.

Eugene also discusses the funding crisis facing Black and Hispanic-led nonprofits, the chilling effect on scientific research, and his upcoming book "Too Much and Not Enough: Neurodivergence, Race, and Broken Systems." A powerful, candid conversation about what happens when systems fail the very people they're meant to serve.

What happens when the surgeon becomes the patient?

In this episode of the Health Design Podcast, we revisit a conversation with Minas Chrysopoulo — world-class breast surgeon and returning guest — who shares the story of a sudden and life-altering diagnosis that changed everything.

In the summer of 2023, Minas woke up with stiffness and numbness in his hands. What followed was a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, a gruelling journey through six different medications, and ultimately the decision to stop operating entirely — a career that had defined him for three decades.

Minas opens up about the shock of losing the thing he loved most, the surprising ways colleagues, patients, and friends responded, and what it truly means to forgive. He reflects on the unexpected gifts that emerged from his darkest period: a deeper gratitude, stronger relationships, and a clarity about what really matters.

Now channelling his experience as a surgeon and a patient into healthcare access and patient empowerment, Minas shares his perspective on informed consent, the constraints patients face when navigating the medical system, and why technology may be the most powerful tool we have for closing the gap between what patients need and what they receive.

This is a rare and honest conversation about resilience, identity, and what it means to build a meaningful second act.

In this episode of the Health Design Podcast, host Moyez Jiwa speaks with Laura Morris, an interior designer at Perkins&Will who specializes in healthcare environments.

Laura shares her passion for designing spaces that support the whole patient — not just the clinical procedure — with a particular focus on women's health. The conversation centers on the Nemours Children's Hospital Advanced Delivery Unit in Delaware, a recently completed project for high-risk pregnancies that Laura describes as her most rewarding work.

Key themes covered:

Design as healing: How environment directly affects patient stress, blood pressure, and willingness to communicate openly with clinicians.
The Nemours ADU project: A unit serving mothers who know their babies will need immediate medical care at birth. The design balances state-of-the-art clinical functionality (labor rooms, operating rooms with resuscitation areas, direct NICU corridors) with hotel-like comforts — spa-style bathrooms, nature views, personalized lighting, and even spaces for staff-hosted baby showers.
Sensory design: Patient-controlled lighting and color-changing artwork, digital signage replacing paper signs, noise-zoned corridors, and frosted windows bringing daylight into operating rooms.
Staff wellbeing: How good design improves staff retention and morale, with the nursing director reporting she still smiles walking in every morning.
Urban hospitals: Practical strategies for inner-city facilities without idyllic settings — borrowed light, biophilic elements, printed window shades, and accessible staff respite spaces.
Three lessons: Collaboration and shared vision, fighting for good design decisions, and proof that speed (18 months for 30,000 sq ft) doesn't have to compromise quality.