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Author: Nicole Piemonte, PhD

Nicole Piemonte, PhD, is the Assistant Dean for Medical Education and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Education at Creighton University School of Medicine, Phoenix Regional Campus where she teaches and supports medical students, residents, and clinical faculty. She received her doctorate in Medical Humanities from The University of Texas Medical Branch, where she studied continental philosophy, medical ethics, literature and medicine, and medical epistemology. Her teaching and research focus broadly on questions about illness, mortality, and compassion — and how the lived experiences of vulnerability and suffering can contribute to the development of the (medical) self. Her first book, Afflicted: How Vulnerability Can Heal Medical Education and Practice, was published in January 2018 with The MIT Press, and she is currently writing a second book, Death and Dying, for MIT Press’s Essential Knowledge Series, which will be released in Summer 2019.

Returning Back to Oneself: Cultivating Vulnerability in the Health Professions

In her essay featured in this issue, “Returning Back to Oneself: Cultivating Vulnerability in the Health Professions,” Nicole Piemonte, PhD reflects on her book, Afflicted: How Vulnerability Can Heal Medical Education and Practice. Using philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard as guides, Piemonte seeks to explore why many clinicians experience a “crisis of meaning” in their work. With the primary focus of healthcare education on biologic intervention, topics of vulnerability and the lived experience of suffering are largely minimized, if not absent. Piemonte calls for us to create a learning environment that recognizes vulnerability as a means to cultivate the courage to authentically engage with human suffering.