Jacek Mostwin
Dr. Jacek Mostwin is a professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. An internationally recognized expert in evaluating and treating all forms of urinary incontinence in men and women, Dr. Mostwin is among the Brady Urological Institute’s most experienced faculty members in performing pelvic and prostatic surgery. He serves as co-director of the Brady Institute’s Horizontal Strand in Ethics and Professionalism in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
His patients include women with adult-onset incontinence or complications from its treatment; men with incontinence after surgical or radiation treatment for prostate cancer; adults with congenital problems such as spina bifida and neurological diseases or injuries who have developed urinary incontinence; and adults who underwent reconstruction in childhood.
I am interested in educational programs to enhance humanism in medicine by better understanding Lives in Medicine, the actual experience of people undergoing or living with illness and the experience of doctors, nurses and those who care for them.
I am working to improve access and learning from the many ways people express themselves about these experiences through published biographies and memoirs, blogs, movies, photographs, and other forms of expression. This work grows from a lifetime of clinical, scientific and educational experiences in academic medicine that have led me to see the importance of personal experience. I have stepped away from clinical work but
I now offer a seminar at Hopkins that explores these biographies, memoirs and related media to better understand of the richness and complexity of the many worlds of medicine for student learning.
For over a decade I have been an active participant and faculty member at the Harvard Macy Institute’s Program For Educators In The Health Professions https://harvardmacy.org/courses/educators and Leading Innovation In Health Care And Innovation https://harvardmacy.org/courses/leaders, programs dedicated to improving medical education and heath care. I share interests with The Oxford Center for Life Writing at Wolfson College of the University of Oxford (https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/lives-medicine and help steer the consortium known as DASH The Doctor as a Humanist (a new organization founded 2017, https://doctorasahumanist.weebly.com/) in its conference and educational programs.
I believe in the spiritual well being of patients and practitioners. For over thirty years I have participated as a volunteer physician for medical pilgrimages to the Shrine at Lourdes in France, and since 2012 I have been a member of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes. A short film based on experiences from my first decade at Lourdes can be found on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/115033269
I believe that patients deserve humane medical care and that physicians are entitled to a sovereignty that extends beyond the limits of education or employment. I believe that the sick people of the world, despite many differences, are common citizens of shared country without borders, and that physicians and nurses belong to a global family despite differences in licensure, certification and training requirements. To that extent I believe in a global medical community. Patients and practitioners teach us about some of the realities of life. They have a chance to be moral agents for the betterment of the world.
Contact details:
Professor of Urology at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Baltimore City County, Maryland, USA
600 N. Wolfe Street – Marburg 143
Baltimore, Maryland 21287-2101
tel. 410-955-4461
E-mail: jmostwin@jhmi.edu