Listen Now:
Ian Barbash, MD, MS, is our guest on the Faculty Factory Podcast this week. In 2025, he became a critical care patient, and in this candid and emotional conversation, he shares what that experience taught him about empathy, presence, and the human side of healthcare.
Dr. Barbash currently serves as Associate Professor of Medicine and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and as a pulmonary and critical care attending physician at UPMC. He is also Medical Director of Physician THRIVE, UPMC’s physician wellbeing program.
Furthermore, he co-leads the UPMC Physicians for Physicians peer support program.
As he is now intimately familiar with both extremes of the intensive care unit, and his work is highly influenced by a deep personal understanding of critical illness and its long-term ripple effects. His goal in being so candid about his own experiences is to champion empathy, in its many different forms, for patients and healthcare professionals.
As he discusses, being present as a healthcare provider doesn’t necessarily need to take a lot of time. Dr. Barbash describes the difference between the providers who were present with him and those who were not, and it was more about making a connection than it was about time.
As he learned from his own experience as a patient, overlooking an “emotional beat” of what a patient is actually saying is an example of a missed connection, even when everyone involved means well. His experience also made one thing clear: critical illness does not stop when you go home.
Learn More about Dr. Barbash in JAMA: Building Empathy | Humanities | JAMA | JAMA Network