Sunita Puri, MD
Keynote 8:10-9:10 a.m.
Language as Medicine: Finding the Right Words for the Right Conversations about Living and Dying
Dr. Sunita Puri is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where she is the Director of the Inpatient Palliative Care Service. She is the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a critically acclaimed literary memoir examining her journey to the practice of palliative medicine, and her quest to help patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. A graduate of Yale University and the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship, her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Wall Street Journal, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. She and her work have been featured in the Atlantic, People Magazine, PBS’ Christiane Amanpour Show, NPR, the Guardian, BBC, India Today, and Literary Hub. In 2019, the Guardian made a mini-documentary of her work with her patients, which has been viewed over 3.5 million times. She has been awarded writing residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Mesa Refuge, and UCross. She is passionate about the ways that the precise and compassionate use of language can empower patients and physicians to have the right conversations about living and dying.
