Abraham Nussbaum
Physician, Teacher, Writer
About
As a physician, I see people hospitalized with mental health crises at Denver Health, a safety-net hospital, where I also serve as Chief Education Officer for the 1,800 students and 1,200 residents who train there annually. As a teacher, I teach the basic sciences underlying psychiatry for first year medical students at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where I am also a professor of psychiatry and an assistant dean of graduate medical education.
Nothing on this site reflects the commitments of either Denver Health or CU, but my own attempts to make sense of caring for others and being cared for.
How did I get here? I read my way to Swarthmore, which earned me an overfull bookshelf and a gig stuffing pasta shells. 1st job next to medicine? Ferrying homeless people away from unwelcoming hospitals as an Americorps volunteer. 1st job in medicine? Canceling holidays for internal medicine residents.
Seeking some sense of these strange-making experiences, I studied medicine, psychiatry, social medicine, and theology at Carolina and Duke. When school was out, I headed home. Listening to the people I meet surprises me, so I stated writing about how we can make medical training and care a little less strange.
I’ve written for America, Commonweal, Psych News, Plough, STAT, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Times Higher Education.
