Laura Vater, MD
About
I'm a physician, mom, writer, speaker, and advocate for the wellbeing of clinicians.
I believe patients and clinicians deserve to be treated as whole human beings, and it's my goal to make the field of medicine more human.
I always wanted to be a doctor.
And when my childhood coach and friend, Kim, was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in her early forties, it helped solidify my decision to pursue oncology.
Now I care for patients with gastrointestinal cancers, like Kim had.
I started writing in medical school to cope with the challenges of witnessing illness
As a pregnant medical student, I witnessed the loss of a child on my obstetrics rotation. I didn't know what to do with my emotion, so I just started writing. That experience was later published as an essay called Papaya.
Now I write narrative essays and have been working on a novel. I'm also a member of the Pegasus Physician Writers at Stanford, and my writing was featured in Anna Quindlen's recent book, Write for Your Life.
Education & Training
I earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Doctor of Medicine from Indiana University School of Medicine.
I completed my residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Oncology at Indiana University.