Pathways to Palliative Care

A Surgeon, a Painter, a Palliative Care Physician

Marcin Chwistek, MD FAAHPM

This column will tell the stories of how AAHPM members found their way to hospice and palliative medicine—many through nontraditional pathways. Our first column features Dr. Geoffrey Dunn from Hamot Medical Center in Erie, PA.

It was a Friday afternoon in early March when I called Geoffrey Dunn, MD FACS, at his home in Erie, PA, to talk about his medical career—the unlikely and fascinating path of a surgeon who left his busy surgical career to embrace a new specialty. He said that the question he gets asked most often is: “Why did you, a surgeon, go into hospice and palliative care?”