I am a woman in pediatric rheumatology. Even in a predominantly female field, at times I feel compelled to mask my emotional response to the consistently complicated, often overwhelming and sometimes ambiguous nature of the job. Rather than detach, however, I choose to emotionally engage with the medical experience through my own medicine: narratives.
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Aviya Lanis, MD is a pediatrician currently in pediatric rheumatology fellowship training at Seattle Children's Hospital. She earned her medical degree at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University in Providence, RI and completed her pediatrics residency at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, NY. Dr. Lanis is the founder and leader of the Narrative Medicine Workgroup affiliated with the Childhood Arthritis & Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), a national organization focused on advancing research within pediatric rheumatology. She has spearheaded and published narrative medicine-based research initiatives bringing the narrative arts to patients and providers in the pediatric rheumatology realm. Dr. Lanis is passionate about narrative medicine as a therapeutic tool to address anxiety, depression and disconnectedness, particularly for patients with chronic illness.