As a hospital leader and physician, AUC graduate (’07) Dr. Dhaval R. Desai continually puts his passion for healing and caring into practice. He firmly believes that the medical community must place a priority on empathy and compassion—not only to ensure that patients get the best possible care but also to support the wellness of frontline healthcare workers. In his conviction, incorporating humanism into medicine is vital to the future success of our nation’s healthcare system. His commitment to fostering and advocating for humanity in medicine inspired him to write a personal narrative of his experience as a frontline physician during the COVID-19 pandemic, Burning Out on the Covid Front Lines: A Doctor’s Memoir of Fatherhood, Race and Perseverance in the Pandemic. His most recent essay, How a Kindergarten Teacher Taught Me to be a Better Doctor has been published in TIME and can be read here.
Dr. Desai currently serves as the director of hospital medicine at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital, where he also is an assistant professor of medicine and distinguished physician. Additionally, he is a pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
