Dr. Matthew Morrison is an English lecturer at Yale teaching the seminar “Medicine and the Humanities: Certainty and Unknowing.” He earned his B.S. at Northwestern University in 2006 and M.D. at the Icahn School of Medicine in 2012.
Our Shadowing and Experiences coordinator Kevin Chen ‘24 had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Morrison about his experiences in medicine and motivation in teaching.
Transcribed by Shadowing and Experiences coordinator Isabelle Han ‘24.
Edited interview transcript from May 05, 2021:
KC: First off, please tell us a little bit about yourself (what you do and your academic career).
MM: Sure! My name is Dr. Matthew Morrison, I’m a lecturer here at Yale in the Humanities and
Medicine, I’ve been lecturing since 2009, and I’m an Emergency Physician in New York. It’s a
strange story as to how I came to teach…I essentially met a psychiatrist who was doing it, and
then I applied to teach a Residential College Seminar, and that went marvelously. I really fell in
love with it, I really love Yale, I really love my students. And ever since, I’ve had the good
fortune to continue teaching. I’ve taught another Residential College Seminar, and First-Year
Seminars in the English, Comp. Lit. and Humanities Departments…
KC: Interesting! So you’re an emergency medicine physician in New York and a lecturer at
Yale. How does that work exactly?
MM: I typically teach Tuesday-Thursday, and work in the E.R. Wednesday-Saturday-Sunday.
Obviously, recently, we’ve been teaching via Zoom. But I'm really looking forward to going
back, the commute is really not a problem for me, and it’s always a gift to see my students in-
person. So much of the beauty of the class is in the field-trips – Beinecke, Center for British Art,
etc.
KC: Definitely! This year was definitely challenging for both students and professors! Talking a
bit more about your career as an Emergency Physician, why did you choose to pursue a medical
degree, and what was that path like for you?
MM: Oh, gosh…I had a very circuitous path to medicine. In undergrad, I was a journalism major
and also a psychology major. I thought I was going to be a journalist, or perhaps a psychologist,
offering talk therapy. And then I slowly realized that the kind of writing I wanted to do was not
of the sort I was doing. The writers I found myself admiring, the ones expressing a personal
voice, did not align with the objectivity-oriented journalism I was learning. And in terms of
psychology, I still have a great respect for talk therapists, but I learned research psychology was
not for me. And then I began feeling out other options, and I started considering medicine. I
began shadowing physicians, assisting in the hospital, and ultimately, something bubbled up
inside of me…I realized it could be an incredible life, where you really do get to help people on a
one-to-one basis, constantly. You know, I have friends in law and business, and many of them
deeply love their jobs, but I feel that in so many ways they're removed from the fruits of their
labors, and that would be really difficult for me. I really loved that human interaction. And now I
feel like I have this wonderful balance.
KC: All right, this is a perfect segue to the next question. So, could you talk about how you
decided on your specialty in emergency medicine?
MM: Well, you know, it's for 1000 reasons -- but I think the main one was the idea of being a
generalist. That was always very romantic to me…I have an attachment to the idea of a doctor
who can still do a little bit of everything, handle anything that walks in the door. I love the idea
of working something up from the ground and saying, “Okay, somebody is coming in with
shortness of breath -- go!” What is it? Is this asthma, is this a pulmonary embolism? So, I love
that. There is a Sherlock Holmes element to it that's fun to me, and I love the idea, again, of not
becoming so specialized that you forget the corpus of medicine. There's something very
appealing about the idea of being a jack-of-all-trades. I have friends that have become
ophthalmologists, and sub-specialize within that -- and sub-sub-specialize -- and they can’t recall
how to push on a chest anymore…
I did find that in some of the other specialties, not all, that there was a certain perhaps repetitious
element to them, that was not fitting for me. I also enjoy very much the physical aspect of the
job. For part of my day, yes, I'm sitting behind the computer, but sometimes I'm pushing on a
chest. I'm placing a central line. I'm intubating a patient. There's a sort of escape from the
cacophony of sounds in the mind that happens when you're physically engaged in a task, and that
can be beautiful.
Part of the gift of teaching is to have this balance where, for three days every week, I’m
immersed in practice, and then for the other two, in class, I get a chance to reflect on it.
Obviously, one is not pure intuition, and the other is not pure reflection, but that’s how I tend to
think of them.
They say that emergency medicine is the most interesting 10 minutes of every other specialty.
You'll have moments of terror, moments of great gratification, and I need that. I love that. I love
the emotional engagement. And to be able to help people when they're in extremis can really be a
beautiful thing. So, for all of those reasons, I think emergency medicine is a really wonderful fit
for me.
KC: Yeah, I kind of feel like you are really the embodiment of, I know it's cliché to say, but
someone who truly wants to help people. You are truly passionate about teaching and caring for
the people you meet.
MM: It’s kind of you to say. I'm certainly not a perfect person, but teaching has helped me to see
more clearly the sort of doctor and person I wish to be. There is no way around it: when a student
shadows you, or when you’re dispensing advice, it helps you to be more conscious of who you
are, and want to be. Ethics sessions, discussions of cognitive biases, all of these help. Beyond
that, teaching reminds you how important all of this is, and why you do it in the first place…it’s
a constant refreshing of one’s senses. For example, calling patients, checking in, is hugely
important, and it’s certainly something I could do more often. But it wasn’t until I was talking to
my students about it that I thought, “You know, there’s a patient I really need to call…” And so I
did. And then I was texting with her last week, and…it just felt wonderful. You don't have to
stay intimate friends with absolutely every patient you’ve ever cared for, of course, but all it
takes is one or two of those closer connections to really pick you up at the end of the day.
Cultivating those habits is important, and teaching has been incredibly helpful for me in doing
so.
KC: Yeah, definitely! So moving on from that, because you’re so passionate about teaching and
well as being an Emergency Physician, did you always know that you wanted to teach or was it
something that just happened?
MM: That is a great question, and I wish I had a straightforward answer for it. I suppose I would
say: ever since graduating residency, I knew that I wanted to do it. I knew that I had these ideas
that were swirling about me, and every time I read a brilliant book, I wanted to share it with
someone – but my family or my friends would be tired of hearing me talk about it! But it was
percolating in me. I applied to a few schools to do it, and things weren't really working out, but
then I miraculously met this psychiatrist on a plane -- his name is Dr. William Sledge. I was
flying to Texas, to work a shift, and he was flying to Costa Rica. He was reading Sinclair
Lewis’s Arrowsmith, and grading papers, and he told me he was a teacher here in the Medical
Humanities. I don’t believe I’d ever met anyone as fascinating. He was a scuba diver, a pilot, a
psychoanalyst… and the more I learned about him, the more I thought, wow, I truly admire this
person profoundly. He just seemed to have this great balance between teaching, psychiatry, his
family, his community, and in every way just seemed to be this renaissance man. And we kept in
touch, and he let me T.A. his classes, and I would sit in and offer my perspective to the students.
And I loved the students. Just being a part of that atmosphere was so exciting for me. It was so
thrilling to visit a classroom of pre-meds, and offer whatever pearls that I could -- I’m always
trying to think, “What would it have helped me to hear when I was that age?” And when the
opportunity to apply to the Residential College Seminar Program came up, I jumped at it. I
poured every ounce of love I have into that class, and I'm so lucky that it worked out…
I really just fell in love with the students. As you may know, students’ papers tend to be about
their own medical experiences, or illnesses in the family, so I always feel that, by the end of the
class, I‘ve come to know everybody very well. And I've kept in touch with so many of them…by
the end of it, it really is a relationship, a special intimacy.
It wasn't just some sort of transactional teaching experience. It was having genuine connections
with people here. So I think it just answers so many questions, for me. How can I best engage
with the world? All of the doctors who took the time to mentor me, who inspired me in medicine,
everybody who made me feel like I belonged here, how can I honor them? How can I pass that
on to people? How can I make students feel that it's acceptable to be a human in medicine, that
it's inevitable to make mistakes as a doctor, that all of us have these feelings of inadequacy and
insecurity? How can I let them know that we feel that way too, and that we were once you too?
Teaching was this magical thing that allowed me to pass it on to other people, and rejoin in this
conversation with the world.
KC: Wow! That's very inspiring! So about your class could you elaborate more on that and speak
to the importance of the intersection between humanities and medicine?
MM: You know, I think I touched on it briefly, in my last answer, which is to say: if I had any
purpose, it’s to let my students feel that it’s alright to be a human being in medicine. That we all
suffer terribly from impostor syndrome, especially where we are -- in high-stress, high-
expectation environments. So often in medical school and residency, I felt: I am surrounded by
geniuses…and, yes, perhaps I did well on this test or that test, but I'm soon going to be found
out.
Or: perhaps I made a mistake in residency, or a patient had a bad outcome, or an attending didn't
quite like me, and I just felt: do I belong here? Is this right for me? Thankfully, when that would
happen, my residency program director would speak to me, make me feel like it was allright, and
say: “It’s okay. You are here to learn.” And that really helped me, and I owe everything to my
residency program director, Mark Clark, for that. His academic interest wasn’t in stroke, it
wasn’t in heart attack -- it was resident wellness. It was: “How do I make the residents training
under me as sane and happy as possible?” And that manifested in everything that he did. It just
came out of his pores. He just wanted you to be a happy, balanced human.
I remember one resident retreat that we went to – and, by the way, that was a part of the
program, you know, going on these retreats, hikes, getting into nature, talking to one another
about our fears and insecurities, just letting it out in the open. It takes a special program director
to elicit that from you, and to make it okay to say those things. But, anyway, in one of them, they
essentially took us each aside and made it seem as if we were going to get into trouble. They told
us, semi-ominously, but gently, “We have to talk about your performance…,” and they did this
individually, to everyone. And then they took us back into a room, a bit fearful, and just when we
thought we were going to be chastised, they unveiled for us a stack of letters from our family and
friends, telling us they loved us, they were with us, that we were almost there, we weren’t alone.
I could cry talking about it right now. That's what an impression it left on me. Realizing:
everyone is with me -- everyone is still with me from my life, my family, friends, they're all
watching me, even if I am disconnected from that, because I just finished a six-night run in the
E.R., or am underwater on another rotation. They’re there. It was as simple as that: we love you.
All these messages of love and encouragement, that was Mark. Mark masterminded that. That
was just who he was. He was helping you to feel, even though you were in a very demanding
program, and one that requires so much you of you intellectually and emotionally, that you were
still a part of the world. And I just felt it.
God, If I could even just, if I could even give people 1/10 th of what Mark gave me; that love and
that comfort and that sense of hope, community, and encouragement, I will have succeeded.
I just have that inspiration that is in my chest, and there are so many others, of course -- I could
burn your ears by rambling about them, but I'll leave it at that. There are so many people who
really left a deep, deep imprint on my heart. And I believe teaching is my way of thanking them
and trying to pay it forward.
KC: Don’t worry about rambling, I think it's very inspiring to hear what really drives you and
what really got into the teaching.
MM: Thank you. Briefly -- to go back to the question about the connection between humanities
and medicine…I would say that my own take on the need for a humanities education in medicine
is that we not infrequently graduate doctors with little bedside manner, or a true understanding of
what it is to be sick, and little sense of what it is to be on the other side of the conversation. And
it's incredibly hard to teach -- and I say this as someone who hasn't perfected this, by any means.
It's just very hard to know how to talk to someone in a sensitive way, to break bad news to them,
to walk them through an illness. Some would say there's really no way to do it until you've been
very sick yourself. I think there may be some merit to that argument. We have these clinical
classes in medical school, the art and science of medicine, but even beyond that…a humanities
background is an indispensable way to help us to know our patients, and ourselves, and become
more comfortable with uncertainty. There is something in the novel, and the essay, that
economics cannot reveal to us about ourselves. Beyond that…If we consider of the sciences as a
sort of continuum from the social sciences, on one side, to particle physics, on the other, I do
believe that medicine is really ideally perched in the middle space. I think medicine has many
elements which are evidence-based and universalist, and at the same time, medicine is always
particular, you always have a specific patient in front of you, with distinct genetics, unique
lifestyle choices, and singular values, and you have to respect that. Oliver Sacks writes in one
wonderful article (“Neurology and the Soul”) you don't treat the lesion, you have to treat the
person. And it's true. You have to take into account their desires, what they care about, who they
are. It’s not just something you can plug into an algorithm. So, all of that really matters. And
lastly, I think, if it’s not too precious to say: medicine’s place in the sciences is almost a
microcosm for life; it has aspects which are rationalistic, and others which can only be intuited,
through experience. The data alone can never tell us what to do next. And in that sense, medicine
is ideally perched to help us understand the problems of living itself.
KC: And then I think perfectly segue to our next question. I think you've kind of touched lightly
on this, but what particular skills do you feel are most important for undergraduates, develop
now especially since you touched on the fact that, you know, it's not just grades, it's not just like
whether you can pass Orgo, or whatever you can do physics. So what skills do you think that
undergrad should try to focus on developing instead?
MM: Well, I always tell my students to just take as many chances as possible, you know: try and
fail now. You have all the opportunities in the world. Undergraduate-time is such a beautiful
period in life, and if I could go back to advise myself, I would tell myself the same thing. I
always wring my hands over being a psych-and-journalism double-major because, well, why did
I go out of my way to fulfill those 13 class prerequisites? When I could have been taking modal
logic, and art history, and literature? I think the less you lock yourself down, the better. Join
groups, take chances, act in a play, sing, try everything. If you find something that doesn't fit,
that's fine, but you might find something that really works. I know this may be a cliché, so
forgive me, but part of the difficulty of life is finding work that doesn't feel like work -- and
that's part of the joy of it too, if you can. And I, in teaching, I've finally found this magical thing
that doesn't feel like work to me. It’s just pure pleasure, and I’m so grateful for that. I think the
only hope to find what you love -- and this includes lots of failure, and self-interrogation, along
the way -- is to continually press yourself to take chances, and see what fits.
KC: Alright, and that's perfect! That actually answered the last question I was gonna ask which
was about advice for current undergraduates and I think you just gave some amazing advice.
MM: Well, sadly, I didn't quite follow my own advice, as I mentioned. I remember taking these
atrocious psychology classes…you always have to read the teacher reviews before you take
classes. I made the mistake of not doing so for one of them, and I had some person who was just
not interested in being a teacher. I just remember how painful this class was. He was just
teaching to his tiny, tiny area of interest. It was supposed to be a broad-based class on
personality, and I was so disappointed. I was paying so much tuition just to hear this person who
didn't really care about teaching. So, read the reviews. Find the teachers who really care about
doing this. And then, beyond that, I would also say: there are always chances, later. You don't
only have four years to figure it out. I continued taking graduate courses in English, far beyond
undergrad. These are things I did in medical school and residency to stay sane. So, it's never too
late.
Also, don't always necessarily worry about burnishing your résumé. I know that's such hard
advice to follow, because everyone worries about making their grad. school application as strong
as possible. But I would say: put in the effort to venture, and take chances.
Lastly, I would just like to say: thank you, and thank you to Yale. I just feel so honored and
grateful to be a part of this community. I love the students. I love teaching. I would love to be
here for a long time. If you've ever wanted to come shadow me, do come. I consider this an
ongoing conversation. And if you have further questions about residency, questions about
medical school, I’m always glad to help. Be well
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