I met Alexis Milligan at a theater workshop for medical educators and immediately ran up to her afterward and said: can you please come on my podcast? Alexis is a movement director, actor, director, and the creator of the Theater of Medicine program at the Shaw Festival. This conversation is about what clinicians can learn from performers about presence, embodiment, and showing up fully for the humans in front of us. We talk about imposter syndrome, two-way theater as a metaphor for the clinical encounter, and why movement, sound, and image are just as essential to communication as words and numbers.

Connect with Alexis:

https://www.alexismilligan.com/

Theatre of Medicine program: https://trellis.org/theatreofmedicine

Creating Space 2026 is open for enrollment! Book your connection call with Joan - head to joanchanmd.com/space

Learn more about Hippocratic Collective: https://hippocraticcollective.org/

Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joanchanmd

Dr. Risa Adams is back for our fifth and final recorded IFS session together, and is a direct follow up from part 4 where I connect with a part stuck in a humiliating grade 4 classroom moment. Risa guides me through the unburdening process, and I share a song that this know-it-all part helped me write! Thank you for all your support of this vulnerable series, it’s been so meaningful and rewarding to share with you.

Connect with Risa: http://ifsmedicine.ca/

Creating Space 2026 is open for enrollment! Book your connection call with Joan - head to joanchanmd.com/space

Learn more about Hippocratic Collective: https://hippocraticcollective.org/

Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joanchanmd

It's the four-year anniversary of The Other Human in the Room, and I am reflecting on what's needed to die this past year — in my podcast, my teaching, my roles, my marriage — and what's quietly being born. From a three-month hiatus to a commencement keynote to becoming a co-site director to a poetry book I'm apparently writing now, this year has been less about building and more about composting.

Creating Space 2026 is open for enrollment! Book your connection call with Joan - head to joanchanmd.com/space

Learn more about Hippocratic Collective: https://hippocraticcollective.org/

Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joanchanmd