About the Director

Biography

Students involved in the eight-week Internal Medicine will be under the direction of Abraham Verghese, MD. Dr. Verghese is Senior Associate Chair, and Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University. He has a strong interest in clinical skills and the teaching of the bedside exam and has published on these subjects and on the patient-physician relationship. 

Prior to coming to Stanford, he was the Director of The Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University Of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he held the Joaquin Cigarroa Jr. Chair in Medicine and was the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professor of Ethics.

Verghese is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary diseases and infectious diseases. He serves on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

In 1990-91, he attended the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree. His books, My Own Country and The Tennis Partner are taught in many medical schools as part of the humanities curriculum.  His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Esquire, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. 

Abraham Verghese MD first novel, "Cutting for Stone," became a New York Times best seller on February 22, 2009, and has been on the San Francisco Chronicle best seller list for months.
Called "A masterpiece of traditional storytelling," by reviewers, "Cutting for Stone" is the story of cojoined twins separated in Central Ethopia who pursue a career in medicine, fall in love with the same woman and eventually wind up working in a hospital in New York City. Verghese is the author of 2 previous highly successful works of non fiction, "My Own Country, A Doctor's Story", and "The Tennis Partner, a Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss.

Abraham Verghese, MD