Why I Failed to Cure My Wife’s Headache and other Wisdom from Dr Scott Abramson

After training near me at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn in neurology and neurophysiology, Dr. Scott Abramson moved cross country and joined Northern California Kaiser Permanente in July 1979 and retired from the Neurology department in San Leandro in 2020.

For over 25 years, he had been involved in the communication mission at Kaiser Permanente, which all started at Toastmasters. He has been a physician coach and communications instructor. His two favorite courses were: “The Secret of Happiness” and “All the Wisdom We Need To Be Joyous Physicians Can Be Found in Country Music.” For over 20 years, he wrote a monthly column in our Kaiser newsletter on communication issues such as, “The Three Most Intelligent words a Physician Can Utter,” “Why I failed to cure my wife’s headache” and The Most Important Words One Can Say to the Bereaved.” Several of these stories have been published in medical journals. Some can be found in video format on YouTube channel: http://doctorwisdom.net/

For the interview, we played a few of his favorite vignettes and he would expand on them. He’s a fantastic storyteller and, as usual, a few concepts you can start applying with your patients now.

Dr. Errin Weisman is passionate about creating sustainable careers for women and fundamentally changing the toxic culture of healthcare one woman at a time. Check out her podcast Doctor Me First at doctorpodcastnetwork.com/doctormefirst