There are many ways aspiring physicians fall in love with medicine, but Joel Katz, MD, MACP, senior vice president of Education at Dana-Farber, may have one of the most unique. Prior to earning his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University, he was a medical illustrator drawing faces of patients with facial fractures for a textbook when he decided to trade his pens 🖊️ for a stethoscope 🩺. “The art was satisfying, but it was lonely and isolating,” Katz explains. “I really enjoyed spending time with patients, so I rerouted my career.”
On July 1, he joined the Institute after a long career in medicine and education. Drawing on his extensive background, Katz leads the accreditation of Dana-Farber’s training and continuing medical education programs – a task that first requires an inventory of the Institute’s extensive training infrastructure and expertise.
“We do an enormous amount of teaching at Dana-Farber,” says Katz, who is also an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Katz now oversees the comprehensive teaching and mentorship of medical students, residents, and clinical fellows and seeks to make teamwork the centerpiece by bringing together diverse professional education programs that extend to nurses, pharmacists, and researchers.
Art continues to guide Katz’s work. “There are significant overlaps in art and medicine – careful observation, nurturing empathic connections, tying clues into a compelling narrative, and feeling comfortable with the inevitable ambiguity of both fields,” he remarks.
That confluence of art and health care is apparent at the Institute, observes Katz. “The Institute’s art collection is on the level of a museum, carefully curated and displayed to promote healing,” he observes. “It’s one of the aspects that attracted me to this role.”
At home, he continues to paint 🎨, a passion he shares with his three children, who are also artists. Even in this stage of his life, the cycle of educator-to-educated persists. Katz says his kids have recently surpassed him in talent. “Now they’re teaching me things,” he chuckles.